Search results for: existing%20FM%20signals

Authors: Iman Zafarparandeh, Muzammil Mumtaz, Paniz Taherzadeh, Deniz Erbulut

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The instability in the atlantoaxial joint may occur due to cervical surgery, congenital anomalies, and trauma. There are different types of fixation techniques proposed for restoring the stability and preventing harmful neurological deterioration. Application of the screw constructs has become a popular alternative to the older techniques for stabilizing the joint. The main difference between the various screw constructs is the type of the screw which can be lateral mass screw, pedicle screw, transarticular screw, and translaminar screw. The aim of this paper is to study the effect of three popular screw constructs fixation techniques on the biomechanics of the atlantoaxial joint using the finite element (FE) method. A three-dimensional FE model of the upper cervical spine including the skull, C1 and C2 vertebrae, and groups of the existing ligaments were developed. The accurate geometry of the model was obtained from the CT data of a 35-year old male. Three screw constructs were designed to compare; Magerl transarticular screw (TA-Screw), Goel-Harms lateral mass screw and pedicle screw (LM-Screw and Pedicle-Screw), and Wright lateral mass screw and translaminar screw (LM-Screw and TL-Screw). Pure moments were applied to the model in the three main planes; flexion (Flex), extension (Ext), axial rotation (AR) and lateral bending (LB). The range of motion (ROM) of C0-C1 and C1-C2 segments for the implanted FE models are compared to the intact FE model and the in vitro study of Panjabi (1988). The Magerl technique showed less effect on the ROM of C0-C1 than the other two techniques in sagittal plane. In lateral bending and axial rotation, the Goel-Harms and Wright techniques showed less effect on the ROM of C0-C1 than the Magerl technique. The Magerl technique has the highest fusion rate as 99% in all loading directions for the C1-C2 segment. The Wright technique has the lowest fusion rate in LB as 79%. The three techniques resulted in the same fusion rate in extension loading as 99%. The maximum stress for the Magerl technique is the lowest in all load direction compared to other two techniques. The maximum stress in all direction was 234 Mpa and occurred in flexion with the Wright technique. The maximum stress for the Goel-Harms and Wright techniques occurred in lateral mass screw. The ROM obtained from the FE results support this idea that the fusion rate of the Magerl is more than 99%. Moreover, the maximum stress occurred in each screw constructs proves the less failure possibility for the Magerl technique. Another advantage of the Magerl technique is the less number of components compared to other techniques using screw constructs. Despite the benefits of the Magerl technique, there are drawbacks to using this method such as reduction of the C1 and C2 before screw placement. Therefore, other fixation methods such as Goel-Harms and Wright techniques find the solution for the drawbacks of the Magerl technique by adding screws separately to C1 and C2. The FE model implanted with the Wright technique showed the highest maximum stress almost in all load direction.

Keywords: cervical spine, finite element model, atlantoaxial, fixation technique

Procedia PDF Downloads 375

Authors: Eyosiyas Aga

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The development of information communication technology has transformed the paper-based mapping and land registration processes to a computerized and networked system. The computerization and networking of real property information system play a vital role in good governance and sustainable development of emerging countries through cost effective, easy and accessible service delivery for the customer. The efficient, transparent and sustainable real property system is becoming the basic infrastructure for the urban development thus improve the data management system and service delivery in the organizations. In Ethiopia, the real property administration is paper based as a result, it confronted problems of data management, illegal transactions, corruptions, and poor service delivery. In order to solve this problem and to facilitate real property market, the implementation of web-based real property updating system is crucial. A web-based real property updating is one of the automation (computerizations) methods to facilitate data sharing, reduce time and cost of the service delivery in real property administration system. In additions, it is useful for the integration of data onto different information systems and organizations. This system is designed by combining open source software which supported by open Geo-spatial consortium. The web-based system is mainly designed by using open source software with the help of open Geo-spatial Consortium. The Open Geo-spatial Consortium standards such as the Web Feature Service and Web Map Services are the most widely used standards to support and improves web-based real property updating. These features allow the integration of data from different sources, and it can be used to maintain consistency of data throughout transactions. The PostgreSQL and Geoserver are used to manage and connect a real property data to the flex viewer and user interface. The system is designed for both internal updating system (municipality); which is mainly updating of spatial and textual information, and the external system (customer) which focus on providing and interacting with the customer. This research assessed the potential of open source web applications and adopted this technology for real property updating system in Ethiopia through simple, cost effective and secured way. The system is designed by combining and customizing open source software to enhance the efficiency of the system in cost effective way. The existing workflow for real property updating is analyzed to identify the bottlenecks, and the new workflow is designed for the system. The requirement is identified through questionnaire and literature review, and the system is prototype for the study area. The research mainly aimed to integrate human resource with technology in designing of the system to reduce data inconsistency and security problems. In additions, the research reflects on the current situation of real property administration and contributions of effective data management system for efficient, transparent and sustainable urban development in Ethiopia.

Keywords: cadaster, real property, sustainable, transparency, web feature service, web map service

Procedia PDF Downloads 255

Authors: Heiko Jessen, Laura Tanus, Slobodan Ruzicic

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Objectives: The efficacy of Stribild®, an integrase strand transfer inhibitor (INSTI) -based STR, has been evaluated in randomized clinical trials and it has demonstrated durable capability in terms of achieving sustained suppression of HIV-1 RNA-levels. However, differences in monitoring frequency, existing selection bias and profile of patients enrolled in the trials, may all result in divergent efficacy of this regimen in routine clinical settings. The aim of this study was to assess the virologic outcomes, safety and tolerability profile of Stribild® in a routine clinical setting. Methods: This was a retrospective monocentric analysis on HIV-1-infected patients, who started with or were switched to Stribild®. Virological failure (VF) was defined as confirmed HIV-RNA>50 copies/ml. The minimum time of follow-up was 24 weeks. The percentage of patients remaining free of therapeutic failure was estimated using the time-to-loss-of-virologic-response (TLOVR) algorithm, by intent-to-treat analysis. Results: We analyzed the data of 197 patients (56 ART-naïve and 141 treatment-experienced patients), who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Majority (95.9%) of patients were male. The median time of HIV-infection at baseline was 2 months in treatment-naïve and 70 months in treatment-experienced patients. Median time [IQR] under ART in treatment-experienced patients was 37 months. Among the treatment-experienced patients 27.0% had already been treated with a regimen consisting of two NRTIs and one INSTI, whereas 18.4% of them experienced a VF. The median time [IQR] of virological suppression prior to therapy with Stribild® in the treatment-experienced patients was 10 months [0-27]. At the end of follow-up (median 33 months), 87.3% (95% CI, 83.5-91.2) of treatment-naïve and 80.3% (95% CI, 75.8-84.8) of treatment-experienced patients remained free of therapeutic failure. Considering only treatment-experienced patients with baseline VL<50 copies/ml, 83.0% (95% CI, 78.5-87.5) remained free of therapeutic failure. A total of 17 patients stopped treatment with Stribild®, 5.4% (3/56) of them were treatment-naïve and 9.9% (14/141) were treatment-experienced patients. The Stribild® therapy was discontinued in 2 (1.0%) because of VF, loss to follow-up in 4 (2.0%), and drug-drug interactions in 2 (1.0%) patients. Adverse events were in 7 (3.6%) patients the reason to switch from therapy with Stribild® and further 2 (1.0%) patients decided personally to switch. The most frequently observed adverse events were gastrointestinal side effects (20.0%), headache (8%), rash events (7%) and dizziness (6%). In two patients we observed an emergence of novel resistances in integrase-gene. The N155H evolved in one patient and resulted in VF. In another patient S119R evolved either during or shortly upon switch from therapy with Stribild®. In one further patient with VF two novel mutations in the RT-gene were observed when compared to historical genotypic test result (V106I/M and M184V), whereby it is not clear whether they evolved during or already before the switch to Stribild®. Conclusions: Effectiveness of Stribild® for treatment-naïve patients was consistent with data obtained in clinical trials. The safety and tolerability profile as well as resistance development confirmed clinical efficacy of Stribild® in a daily practice setting.

Keywords: ART, HIV, integrase inhibitor, stribild

Procedia PDF Downloads 278

Authors: Omar Faruqe Hamim, M. Shamsul Hoque, Rich C. McIlroy, Katherine L. Plant, Neville A. Stanton

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Road safety has become an alarming issue, especially in low-middle income developing countries. The traditional approaches lack the out of the box thinking, making engineers confined to applying usual techniques in making roads safer. A socio-technical approach has recently been introduced in improving road intersections through designing with intent. This Design With Intent (DWI) approach aims to give practitioners a more nuanced approach to design and behavior, working with people, people’s understanding, and the complexities of everyday human experience. It's a collection of design patterns —and a design and research approach— for exploring the interactions between design and people’s behavior across products, services, and environments, both digital and physical. Through this approach, it can be seen that how designing with people in behavior change can be applied to social and environmental problems, as well as commercially. It has a total of 101 cards across eight different lenses, such as architectural, error-proofing, interaction, ludic, perceptual, cognitive, Machiavellian, and security lens each having its own distinct characteristics of extracting ideas from the participant of this approach. For this research purpose, a three-legged accident blackspot intersection of a national highway has been chosen to perform the DWI workshop. Participants from varying fields such as civil engineering, naval architecture and marine engineering, urban and regional planning, and sociology actively participated for a day long workshop. While going through the workshops, the participants were given a preamble of the accident scenario and a brief overview of DWI approach. Design cards of varying lenses were distributed among 10 participants and given an hour and a half for brainstorming and generating ideas to improve the safety of the selected intersection. After the brainstorming session, the participants spontaneously went through roundtable discussions regarding the ideas they have come up with. According to consensus of the forum, ideas were accepted or rejected. These generated ideas were then synthesized and agglomerated to bring about an improvement scheme for the intersection selected in our study. To summarize the improvement ideas from DWI approach, color coding of traffic lanes for separate vehicles, channelizing the existing bare intersection, providing advance warning traffic signs, cautionary signs and educational signs motivating road users to drive safe, using textured surfaces at approach with rumble strips before the approach of intersection were the most significant one. The motive of this approach is to bring about new ideas from the road users and not just depend on traditional schemes to increase the efficiency, safety of roads as well and to ensure the compliance of road users since these features are being generated from the minds of users themselves.

Keywords: design with intent, road safety, human experience, behavior

Procedia PDF Downloads 128

Authors: A. Marais

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A challenging aspect of teaching cello to novice adult learners is finding adequate lesson material and applying relevant teaching methodologies. It could play a crucial role in adult learners' decision to commence or stop taking music lessons. This study contributes to the theory and practises of continuing education. This study is important to lifelong learning, especially with the focus on adult teaching and learning and the difficulties concerning these themes. The research problem identified for this study is we are not aware of adults' life stories; thus, cello lesson material is not always relevant for adult's specific needs for motivation and goals for starting cello lessons. In my experience, an adult does not necessarily want to play children songs when they learn a new instrument. They want material and lessons fitted to adult learners. Adults also learn differently from younger beginners. Adults ask questions such as how and why, while children more readily accept what is being taught. This research creates awareness of adults' musical needs and learning methods. If every adult shares their own story for commencing and continuing with cello lessons, material should be created, revised, or adapted for more individually appropriate lessons. A number of studies show that adults taking music lessons experience a decrease in feelings of loneliness and isolation. It gives adults a sense of wellbeing and can help improve immune systems. The purpose of this research study will be to discover the life stories of adult amateur cellists. At this stage in the research, the life stories of amateur cellists can generally be defined as personal reflections of their motivations for and experiences of commencing and continuing with individual lessons. The findings of this study will contribute to the development of cello lesson material for adult beginners based on their stories. This research could also encourage adults to commence with music lessons and could, in that way, contribute to their quality of life. Music learners become aware of deep spiritual, emotional, and social values incorporated or experienced through musical learning. This will be a qualitative study with a narrative approach making use of oral history. The chosen method will encapsulate the stories of amateur individual adults starting and continuing with cello lessons. The narrative method entails experiences as expressed in lived and told stories of individuals. Oral history is used as part of the narrative method and entails gathering of personal reflections of events and their cause and effects from an individual or several individuals. These findings from this study will contribute to adult amateur cellists' motivations to continue with music lessons and inspire others to commence. The inspiring life stories of the amateur cellists would provide insight into finding and creating new cello lesson material and enhance existing teaching methodologies for adult amateur cellists.

Keywords: adult, amateur, cello, education, learning, music, stories

Procedia PDF Downloads 123

Authors: Anne M. Denton, Rahul Gomes, David W. Franzen

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High-resolution elevation data are becoming increasingly available, but typical approaches for computing topographic features, like slope and curvature, still assume small sliding windows, for example, of size 3x3. That means that the digital elevation model (DEM) has to be resampled to the scale of the landform features that are of interest. Any higher resolution is lost in this resampling. When the topographic features are computed through regression that is performed at the resolution of the original data, the accuracy can be much higher, and the reported result can be adjusted to the length scale that is relevant locally. Slope and variance are calculated for overlapping windows, meaning that one regression result is computed per raster point. The number of window centers per area is the same for the output as for the original DEM. Slope and variance are computed by performing regression on the points in the surrounding window. Such an approach is computationally feasible because of the additive nature of regression parameters and variance. Any doubling of window size in each direction only takes a single pass over the data, corresponding to a logarithmic scaling of the resulting algorithm as a function of the window size. Slope and variance are stored for each aggregation step, allowing the reported slope to be selected to minimize variance. The approach thereby adjusts the effective window size to the landform features that are characteristic to the area within the DEM. Starting with a window size of 2x2, each iteration aggregates 2x2 non-overlapping windows from the previous iteration. Regression results are stored for each iteration, and the slope at minimal variance is reported in the final result. As such, the reported slope is adjusted to the length scale that is characteristic of the landform locally. The length scale itself and the variance at that length scale are also visualized to aid in interpreting the results for slope. The relevant length scale is taken to be half of the window size of the window over which the minimum variance was achieved. The resulting process was evaluated for 1-meter DEM data and for artificial data that was constructed to have defined length scales and added noise. A comparison with ESRI ArcMap was performed and showed the potential of the proposed algorithm. The resolution of the resulting output is much higher and the slope and aspect much less affected by noise. Additionally, the algorithm adjusts to the scale of interest within the region of the image. These benefits are gained without additional computational cost in comparison with resampling the DEM and computing the slope over 3x3 images in ESRI ArcMap for each resolution. In summary, the proposed approach extracts slope and aspect of DEMs at the lengths scales that are characteristic locally. The result is of higher resolution and less affected by noise than existing techniques.

Keywords: high resolution digital elevation models, multi-scale analysis, slope calculation, window-based regression

Procedia PDF Downloads 120

Authors: Evelyn Bilias-Lolis, Emily Louise Winter

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Schools have a responsibility to implement school-wide frameworks that actively prevent, detect, and support all aspects of child development and learning. Such efforts can range from individual or classroom-level supports to school-wide primary prevention practices for the school’s infrastructure or climate. This study assessed the perceptions of educators across a variety of disciplines in Connecticut (i.e., elementary and secondary education, special education, school psychology, and school social work) on the perceived impact of their beliefs, language, and behavior about food and body consciousness on student self-image and school climate. Participants (N=50) completed a short electronic questionnaire measuring perceptions of how their behavior can influence their students’ opinions about themselves, their emerging self-image, and the overall climate of the school community. Secondly, the beliefs that were directly assessed in the first portion of the survey were further measured through the use of applied social vignettes involving students directly or as bystanders. Preliminary findings are intriguing. When asked directly, 100% of the respondents reported that what they say to students directly could influence student opinions about themselves and 98% of participants further agreed that their behavior both to and in front of students could impact a student’s developing self-image. Likewise, 82% of the sample agreed that their personal language and behavior affect the overall climate of a school building. However, when the above beliefs were assessed via applied social vignettes depicting routine social exchanges, results were significantly more widespread (i.e., results were evenly dispersed among levels of agreement and disagreement across participants in all areas). These preliminary findings offer humble but critical implications for informing integrated school wellness frameworks that aim to create body-sensitive school communities. Research indicates that perceptions about body image, attitudes about eating, and the onset of disordered eating practices surface in school-aged years. Schools provide a natural setting for instilling foundations for child wellness as a natural extension of existing school climate reform efforts. These measures do not always need to be expansive or extreme. Rather, educators have a ripe opportunity to become champions for health and wellness through increased self-awareness and subtle shifts in language and behavior. Future psychological research needs to continue to explore this line of inquiry using larger and more varied samples of educators in order to identify needs in teacher training and development that can yield positive and preventative health outcomes for children.

Keywords: body-sensitive schools, integrated school health, school climate reform, teacher awareness

Procedia PDF Downloads 148

Authors: Md Kamrul Hassan

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Adaptation interventions are the common response to manage the vulnerabilities of climate change. The nature of adaptation intervention depends on the degree of vulnerability and the capacity of a society. The coping interventions can take the form of hard adaptation – utilising technologies and capital goods like dykes, embankments, seawalls, and/or soft adaptation – engaging knowledge and information sharing, capacity building, policy and strategy development, and innovation. Hard adaptation is quite capital intensive but provides immediate relief from climate change vulnerabilities. This type of adaptation is not real development, as the investment for the adaptation cannot improve the performance – just maintain the status quo of a social or ecological system, and often lead to maladaptation in the long-term. Maladaptation creates a two-way loss for a society – interventions bring further vulnerability on top of the existing vulnerability and investment for getting rid of the consequence of interventions. Hard adaptation is popular to the vulnerable groups, but it focuses so much on the immediate solution and often ignores the environmental issues and future risks of climate change. On the other hand, soft adaptation is education oriented where vulnerable groups learn how to live with climate change impacts. Soft adaptation interventions build the capacity of vulnerable groups through training, innovation, and support, which might enhance the resilience of a system. In consideration of long-term sustainability, soft adaptation can contribute more to resilience than hard adaptation. Taking a developing society as the study context, this study aims to investigate and understand the effectiveness of the adaptation interventions of the coastal community of Sundarbans mangrove forest in Bangladesh. Applying semi-structured interviews with a range of Sundarbans stakeholders including community residents, tourism demand-supply side stakeholders, and conservation and management agencies (e.g., Government, NGOs and international agencies) and document analysis, this paper reports several key insights regarding climate change adaptation. Firstly, while adaptation interventions may offer a short-term to medium-term solution to climate change vulnerabilities, interventions need to be revised for long-term sustainability. Secondly, soft adaptation offers advantages in terms of resilience in a rapidly changing environment, as it is flexible and dynamic. Thirdly, there is a challenge to communicate to educate vulnerable groups to understand more about the future effects of hard adaptation interventions (and the potential for maladaptation). Fourthly, hard adaptation can be used if the interventions do not degrade the environmental balance and if the investment of interventions does not exceed the economic benefit of the interventions. Overall, the goal of an adaptation intervention should be to enhance the resilience of a social or ecological system so that the system can with stand present vulnerabilities and future risks. In order to be sustainable, adaptation interventions should be designed in such way that those can address vulnerabilities and risks of climate change in a long-term timeframe.

Keywords: adaptation, climate change, maladaptation, resilience, Sundarbans, sustainability, vulnerability

Procedia PDF Downloads 182

Authors: Ali Mohammed Ali Lmbash

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The global refugee crisis points to the vital need for sustainable and resistant solutions to different kinds of problems for displaced persons all over the world. Among the myriads of sustainable concerns, however, there are diverse considerations including energy consumption, waste management, water access, and resiliency of structures. Our research aims to develop distinct ideas for sustainable architecture given the exigent problems in disaster-threatened areas starting with the Hatay Refugee camp in Turkey where the majority of the camp dwellers are Syrian refugees. Commencing community-based participatory research which focuses on the socio-environmental issues of displaced populations, this study will apply two approaches with a specific focus on the Hatay region. The initial experiment uses Richter's predictive model and simulations to forecast earthquake outcomes in refugee campers. The result could be useful in implementing architectural design tactics that enhance structural reliability and ensure the security and safety of shelters through earthquakes. In the second experiment a model is generated which helps us in predicting the quality of the existing water sources and since we understand how greatly water is vital for the well-being of humans, we do it. This research aims to enable camp administrators to employ forward-looking practices while managing water resources and thus minimizing health risks as well as building resilience of the refugees in the Hatay area. On the other side, this research assesses other sustainability problems of Hatay Refugee Camp as well. As energy consumption becomes the major issue, housing developers are required to consider energy-efficient designs as well as feasible integration of renewable energy technologies to minimize the environmental impact and improve the long-term sustainability of housing projects. Waste management is given special attention in this case by imposing recycling initiatives and waste reduction measures to reduce the pace of environmental degradation in the camp's land area. As well, study gives an insight into the social and economic reality of the camp, investigating the contribution of initiatives such as urban agriculture or vocational training to the enhancement of livelihood and community empowerment. In a similar fashion, this study combines the latest research with practical experience in order to contribute to the continuing discussion on sustainable architecture during disaster relief, providing recommendations and info that can be adapted on every scale worldwide. Through collaborative efforts and a dedicated sustainability approach, we can jointly get to the root of the cause and work towards a far more robust and equitable society.

Keywords: smart architecture, Hatay Camp, sustainability, machine learning.

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Authors: Rituparna Pal, Faiz Ahmed

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Neighbourhood energy efficiency is a newly emerged term to address the quality of urban strata of built environment in terms of various covariates of sustainability. The concept of sustainability paradigm in developed nations has encouraged the policymakers for developing urban scale cities to envision plans under the aegis of urban scale sustainability. The concept of neighbourhood energy efficiency is realized a lot lately just when the cities, towns and other areas comprising this massive global urban strata have started facing a strong blow from climate change, energy crisis, cost hike and an alarming shortfall in the justice which the urban areas required. So this step of urban sustainability can be easily referred more as a ‘Retrofit Action’ which is to cover up the already affected urban structure. So even if we start energy efficiency for existing cities and urban areas the initial layer remains, for which a complete model of urban sustainability still lacks definition. Urban sustainability is a broadly spoken off word with end number of parameters and policies through which the loop can be met. Out of which neighbourhood energy efficiency can be an integral part where the concept and index of neighbourhood scale indicators, block level indicators and building physics parameters can be understood, analyzed and concluded to help emerge guidelines for urban scale sustainability. The future of neighbourhood energy efficiency not only lies in energy efficiency but also important parameters like quality of life, access to green, access to daylight, outdoor comfort, natural ventilation etc. So apart from designing less energy-hungry buildings, it is required to create a built environment which will create less stress on buildings to consume more energy. A lot of literary analysis has been done in the Western countries prominently in Spain, Paris and also Hong Kong, leaving a distinct gap in the Indian scenario in exploring the sustainability at the urban strata. The site for the study has been selected in the upcoming capital city of Amaravati which can be replicated with similar neighbourhood typologies in the area. The paper suggests a methodical intent to quantify energy and sustainability indices in detail taking by involving several macro, meso and micro level covariates and parameters. Several iterations have been made both at macro and micro level and have been subjected to simulation, computation and mathematical models and finally to comparative analysis. Parameters at all levels are analyzed to suggest the best case scenarios which in turn is extrapolated to the macro level finally coming out with a proposal model for energy efficient neighbourhood and worked out guidelines with significance and correlations derived.

Keywords: energy quantification, macro scale parameters, meso scale parameters, micro scale parameters

Procedia PDF Downloads 166

Authors: Donald Wright

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The ultimate goal of this study is to reinvigorate the philosophical underpinnings the study of urbanization with scientific data with the goal of circumventing what seems an inevitable future clash between rural and urban populations. To that end urban infrastructure must be sustainable economically, politically and ecologically over the course of several generations as cities continue to grow with the incorporation of climate refugees. Our research will provide data concerning the projected increase in population over the coming two decades in Morocco, and the population will shift from rural areas to urban centers during that period of time. As a result, urban infrastructure will need to be adapted, developed or built to fit the demand of future internal migrations from rural to urban centers in Morocco. This paper will also examine how past experiences of internally displaced people give insight into the challenges faced by future migrants and, beyond the gathering of data, how people react to internal migration. This study employs four different sets of research tools. First, a large part of this study is archival, which involves compiling the relevant literature on the topic and its complex history. This step also includes gathering data bout migrations in Morocco from public data sources. Once the datasets are collected, the next part of the project involves populating the attribute fields and preprocessing the data to make it understandable and usable by machine learning algorithms. In tandem with the mathematical interpretation of data and projected migrations, this study benefits from a theoretical understanding of the critical apparatus existing around urban development of the 20th and 21st centuries that give us insight into past infrastructure development and the rationale behind it. Once the data is ready to be analyzed, different machine learning algorithms will be experimented (k-clustering, support vector regression, random forest analysis) and the results compared for visualization of the data. The final computational part of this study involves analyzing the data and determining what we can learn from it. This paper helps us to understand future trends of population movements within and between regions of North Africa, which will have an impact on various sectors such as urban development, food distribution and water purification, not to mention the creation of public policy in the countries of this region. One of the strengths of this project is the multi-pronged and cross-disciplinary methodology to the research question, which enables an interchange of knowledge and experiences to facilitate innovative solutions to this complex problem. Multiple and diverse intersecting viewpoints allow an exchange of methodological models that provide fresh and informed interpretations of otherwise objective data.

Keywords: climate change, machine learning, migration, Morocco, urban development

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Authors: Aleksandra Dudkowska, Gabriela Gic-Grusza

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Wind wave-induced sediment transport is an important multidimensional and multiscale dynamic process affecting coastal seabed changes and coastline evolution. The knowledge about sediment transport rate is important to solve many environmental and geotechnical issues. There are many types of sediment transport models but none of them is widely accepted. It is bacause the process is not fully defined. Another problem is a lack of sufficient measurment data to verify proposed hypothesis. There are different types of models for longshore sediment transport (LST, which is discussed in this work) and cross-shore transport which is related to different time and space scales of the processes. There are models describing bed-load transport (discussed in this work), suspended and total sediment transport. LST models use among the others the information about (i) the flow velocity near the bottom, which in case of wave-currents interaction in coastal zone is a separate problem (ii) critical bed shear stress that strongly depends on the type of sediment and complicates in the case of heterogeneous sediment. Moreover, LST rate is strongly dependant on the local environmental conditions. To organize existing knowledge a series of sediment transport models intercomparisons was carried out as a part of the project “Development of a predictive model of morphodynamic changes in the coastal zone”. Four classical one-grid-point models were studied and intercompared over wide range of bottom shear stress conditions, corresponding with wind-waves conditions appropriate for coastal zone in polish marine areas. The set of models comprises classical theories that assume simplified influence of turbulence on the sediment transport (Du Boys, Meyer-Peter & Muller, Ribberink, Engelund & Hansen). It turned out that the values of estimated longshore instantaneous mass sediment transport are in general in agreement with earlier studies and measurements conducted in the area of interest. However, none of the formulas really stands out from the rest as being particularly suitable for the test location over the whole analyzed flow velocity range. Therefore, based on the models discussed a new unified formula for longshore sediment transport rate estimation is introduced, which constitutes the main original result of this study. Sediment transport rate is calculated based on the bed shear stress and critical bed shear stress. The dependence of environmental conditions is expressed by one coefficient (in a form of constant or function) thus the model presented can be quite easily adjusted to the local conditions. The discussion of the importance of each model parameter for specific velocity ranges is carried out. Moreover, it is shown that the value of near-bottom flow velocity is the main determinant of longshore bed-load in storm conditions. Thus, the accuracy of the results depends less on the sediment transport model itself and more on the appropriate modeling of the near-bottom velocities.

Keywords: bedload transport, longshore sediment transport, sediment transport models, coastal zone

Procedia PDF Downloads 379

Authors: Sanjeev Sinha, Samir Saurav

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The rapid growth of urban areas in India has led to transportation challenges like traffic congestion and an increase in accidents. Despite efforts by state governments and local administrations to improve urban transport, the surge in private vehicles has worsened the situation. Patna, located in Bihar State, is an example of the trend of increasing reliance on private motor vehicles, resulting in vehicular congestion and emissions. The existing transportation infrastructure is inadequate to meet future travel demands, and there has been a notable increase in the share of private vehicles in the city. Additionally, there has been a surge in economic activities in the region, which has increased the demand for improved travel convenience and connectivity. To address these challenges, a study was conducted to assess the most suitable transit mode for the proposed transit corridor outlined in the Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) for Patna. The study covered four stages: developing screening criteria, evaluating parameters for various alternatives, qualitative and quantitative evaluations of alternatives, and implementation options for the most viable alternative. The study suggests that a mass transit system such as a metro rail is necessary to enhance Patna's urban public transport system. The New Metro Policy 2017 outlines specific prerequisites for submitting a Metro Rail Project Proposal to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), including the preparation of a CMP, the formation of an Urban Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA), the creation of an Alternative Analysis Report, the development of a Detailed Project Report, a Multi-Modal Integration Plan, and a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Plan. In 2018, the Comprehensive Mobility Plan for Patna was prepared, setting the stage for the subsequent steps in the metro rail project proposal. The results indicated that from the screening and analysis of qualitative parameters for different alternative modes in Patna, it is inferred that the Metro Rail and Monorail score 82.25 and 70.50, respectively, on a scale of 100. Based on the initial analysis and alternative evaluation in the form of quantitative analysis, the Metro Rail System significantly outperformed the Monorail system. The Metro Rail System has a positive Economic Net Present Value (ENPV) at a 14% internal rate of return, while the Monorail has a negative value. In conclusion, the study recommends choosing metro rail over monorail for the proposed transit corridor in Patna. However, the lack of broad-based technical expertise may result in implementation delays and increased costs for monorail.

Keywords: comprehensive mobility plan, alternative analysis, mobility corridors, mass transit system

Procedia PDF Downloads 100

Authors: Mohamed Bualhamam

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Due to the complex nature of tourism resources of the Northern part of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the potential of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) in resolving these issues was used. The study was an attempt to use existing GIS data layers to identify sensitive natural environment and archaeological heritage resources that may be threatened by increased urban growth and give some specific recommendations to protect the area. By identifying sensitive natural environment and archaeological heritage resources, public agencies and citizens are in a better position to successfully protect important natural lands and direct growth away from environmentally sensitive areas. The paper concludes that applications of GIS and RS in study of urban growth impact in tourism resources are a strong and effective tool that can aid in tourism planning and decision-making. The study area is one of the fastest growing regions in the country. The increase in population along the region, as well as rapid growth of towns, has increased the threat to natural resources and archeological sites. Satellite remote sensing data have been proven useful in assessing the natural resources and in monitoring the changes. The study used GIS and RS to identify sensitive natural environment and archaeological heritage resources that may be threatened by increased urban growth. The result of GIS analyses shows that the Northern part of the UAE has variety for tourism resources, which can use for future tourism development. Rapid urban development in the form of small towns and different economic activities are showing in different places in the study area. The urban development extended out of old towns and have negative affected of sensitive tourism resources in some areas. Tourism resources for the Northern part of the UAE is a highly complex resources, and thus requires tools that aid in effective decision making to come to terms with the competing economic, social, and environmental demands of sustainable development. The UAE government should prepare a tourism databases and a GIS system, so that planners can be accessed for archaeological heritage information as part of development planning processes. Applications of GIS in urban planning, tourism and recreation planning illustrate that GIS is a strong and effective tool that can aid in tourism planning and decision- making. The power of GIS lies not only in the ability to visualize spatial relationships, but also beyond the space to a holistic view of the world with its many interconnected components and complex relationships. The worst of the damage could have been avoided by recognizing suitable limits and adhering to some simple environmental guidelines and standards will successfully develop tourism in sustainable manner. By identifying sensitive natural environment and archaeological heritage resources of the Northern part of the UAE, public agencies and private citizens are in a better position to successfully protect important natural lands and direct growth away from environmentally sensitive areas.

Keywords: GIS, natural environment, UAE, urban growth

Procedia PDF Downloads 249

Authors: Robby Y. Tallar, Nikodemus L., Yuri S., Jian P. Suen

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Research in the subject of ecological water resources management is full of trivial questions addressed and it seems, today to be one branch of science that can strongly contribute to the study of complexity (physical, biological, ecological, socio-economic, environmental, and other aspects). Existing literature available on different facets of these studies, much of it is technical and targeted for specific users. This study offered the combination all aspects in evaluation methodology for aquaculture lakes with its paradigm refer to hierarchical theory and to the effects of spatial specific arrangement of an object into a space or local area. Therefore, the process in developing a conceptual framework represents the more integrated and related applicable concept from the grounded theory. A design of integrated evaluation methodology for aquaculture lakes is presented. The method is based on the identification of a series of attributes which can be used to describe status of aquaculture lakes using certain indicators from aquaculture water quality index (AWQI), aesthetic aquaculture lake index (AALI) and rapid appraisal for fisheries index (RAPFISH). The preliminary preparation could be accomplished as follows: first, the characterization of study area was undertaken at different spatial scales. Second, an inventory data as a core resource such as city master plan, water quality reports from environmental agency, and related government regulations. Third, ground-checking survey should be completed to validate the on-site condition of study area. In order to design an integrated evaluation methodology for aquaculture lakes, finally we integrated and developed rating scores system which called Integrated Aquaculture Lake Index (IALI).The development of IALI are reflecting a compromise all aspects and it responds the needs of concise information about the current status of aquaculture lakes by the comprehensive approach. IALI was elaborated as a decision aid tool for stakeholders to evaluate the impact and contribution of anthropogenic activities on the aquaculture lake’s environment. The conclusion was while there is no denying the fact that the aquaculture lakes are under great threat from the pressure of the increasing human activities, one must realize that no evaluation methodology for aquaculture lakes can succeed by keeping the pristine condition. The IALI developed in this work can be used as an effective, low-cost evaluation methodology of aquaculture lakes for developing countries. Because IALI emphasizes the simplicity and understandability as it must communicate to decision makers and the experts. Moreover, stakeholders need to be helped to perceive their lakes so that sites can be accepted and valued by local people. For this site of lake development, accessibility and planning designation of the site is of decisive importance: the local people want to know whether the lake condition is safe or whether it can be used.

Keywords: aesthetic value, AHP, aquaculture lakes, integrated lakes, RAPFISH

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Authors: Samanta Kietytė

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The object of this study is the verbal derivatives stemming from the Lithuanian prefix per-. The prefix under examination can be classified as prepositional, having descended from the preposition per, thereby sharing the same prototypical meaning – denoting movement OVER. These frequently co-occur within sentences (1). The aim of this paper is to conduct a semantic analysis of the prefix per- and to propose a possible radial network of its meanings. In essence, the aim is to identify the interrelationships existing between its meanings. 1) Jis peršoko per tvorą/ 3SG.NOM.M jump.PST.3 over fence.ACC.SG. /ʻHe jumped over the fenceʼ. The foundation of this work lies in the methodological and theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics. The prototypical meaning of prefixes consistently embodies spatial dimensions that can be described through image schemas. This entails the identification of the trajectory, the landmark, and the relation between them in the situation described by the prefixed verb. The meanings of linguistic units are not perceived as arbitrary, but rather, they are interconnected through semantic motivation. According to this perspective, a singular meaning within linguistic units is considered as prototypical, while additional meanings are descended (not necessarily directly) from it. For example, one of the per- meanings TRANSFER (2) is derived from the prototypical meaning OVER. 2) Prašau persiųsti vadovo laišką man./ Ask.PRS.1 forward.INF manager.GEN.SG email.ACC.SG 1.SG.DAT/ ʻPlease forward the manager‘s email to meʼ. Certain semantic relations are explained by the conceptual metaphor and metonymy theory. For instances, when prefixed verb has a meaning WIN (3) it is related to the prototypical meaning. In this case, the prefixed verb describes situations of winning in various ways. In the prototypical meaning, the trajector moves higher than the landmark, and winning is metaphorically perceived as being higher. 3) Sūnus peraugo tėvą./ Son.NOM.SG outgrow.PST.3 father.ACC.SG/ ʻThe son has outgrown the fatherʼ. The data utilized for this study was collected from the 2014 grammatically annotated text "Lithuanian Web (LithuanianWaC v2)", consisting of 63,645,700 words. Given that the corpus is grammatically lemmatized, the list of the 793 items was obtained using the wordlist function and specifying that verbs starting with per were searched. The list included not only prefixed verbs but also other verbs whose roots have the same letter sequences as prefixes. Also, words with misspellings, without diacritical marks, and words listed for lemmatization errors were rejected, and a total of 475 derivatives were left for further analysis. The semantic analysis revealed that there are 12 distinct meanings of the prefix per-. The spatial meanings were extracted by determining what a trajector is, what a landmark is, and what the relation between them is. The connection between non-spatial meanings and spatial ones occurs through semantic motivation established by identifying elements that correspond to the trajector and landmark. The analysis reveals that there are no strict boundaries among these meanings, instead showing a continuum that encompasses a central core and a peripheral association with their internal structure, i.e., some derivatives are more prototypical of a particular meaning than others.

Keywords: word-formation, cognitive semantics, metaphor, radial networks, prototype theory, prefix

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Authors: Amin Salighehdar, Ziwen Ye, Mingzhe Liu, Ionut Florescu, Alan F. Blumberg

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Storm surge is an abnormal water level caused by a storm. Accurate prediction of a storm surge is a challenging problem. Researchers developed various ensemble modeling techniques to combine several individual forecasts to produce an overall presumably better forecast. There exist some simple ensemble modeling techniques in literature. For instance, Model Output Statistics (MOS), and running mean-bias removal are widely used techniques in storm surge prediction domain. However, these methods have some drawbacks. For instance, MOS is based on multiple linear regression and it needs a long period of training data. To overcome the shortcomings of these simple methods, researchers propose some advanced methods. For instance, ENSURF (Ensemble SURge Forecast) is a multi-model application for sea level forecast. This application creates a better forecast of sea level using a combination of several instances of the Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA). An ensemble dressing method is based on identifying best member forecast and using it for prediction. Our contribution in this paper can be summarized as follows. First, we investigate whether the ensemble models perform better than any single forecast. Therefore, we need to identify the single best forecast. We present a methodology based on a simple Bayesian selection method to select the best single forecast. Second, we present several new and simple ways to construct ensemble models. We use correlation and standard deviation as weights in combining different forecast models. Third, we use these ensembles and compare with several existing models in literature to forecast storm surge level. We then investigate whether developing a complex ensemble model is indeed needed. To achieve this goal, we use a simple average (one of the simplest and widely used ensemble model) as benchmark. Predicting the peak level of Surge during a storm as well as the precise time at which this peak level takes place is crucial, thus we develop a statistical platform to compare the performance of various ensemble methods. This statistical analysis is based on root mean square error of the ensemble forecast during the testing period and on the magnitude and timing of the forecasted peak surge compared to the actual time and peak. In this work, we analyze four hurricanes: hurricanes Irene and Lee in 2011, hurricane Sandy in 2012, and hurricane Joaquin in 2015. Since hurricane Irene developed at the end of August 2011 and hurricane Lee started just after Irene at the beginning of September 2011, in this study we consider them as a single contiguous hurricane event. The data set used for this study is generated by the New York Harbor Observing and Prediction System (NYHOPS). We find that even the simplest possible way of creating an ensemble produces results superior to any single forecast. We also show that the ensemble models we propose generally have better performance compared to the simple average ensemble technique.

Keywords: Bayesian learning, ensemble model, statistical analysis, storm surge prediction

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Authors: Rojan Dahal

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One Health refers to a collaborative effort between multiple disciplines - locally, nationally, and globally - to attain optimal health. Although there were unprecedented intersectoral alliances between the animal and human health sectors during the avian influenza outbreak, there are different views and perceptions concerning institutionalizing One Health in South Asia. It is likely a structural barrier between the relevant professionals working in different entities or ministries when it comes to collaborating on One Health actions regarding zoonotic diseases. Politicians and the public will likely need to invest large amounts of money, demonstrate political will, and understand how One Health works to overcome these barriers. One Health might be hard to invest in South Asian countries, where the benefits are based primarily on models and projections and where numerous issues related to development and health need urgent attention. The other potential barrier to enabling the One Health concept in responding to zoonotic diseases is a failure to represent One Health in zoonotic disease control and prevention measures in the national health policy, which is a critical component of institutionalizing the One Health concept. One Health cannot be institutionalized without acknowledging the linkages between animal, human, and environmental sectors in dealing with zoonotic diseases. Efforts have been made in the past to prepare a preparedness plan for One Health implementation, but little has been done to establish a policy environment to institutionalize One Health. It is often assumed that health policy refers specifically to medical care issues and health care services. When drafting, reviewing, and redrafting the policy, it is important to engage a wide range of stakeholders. One Health institutionalization may also be hindered by the interplay between One Health professionals and bureaucratic inertia in defining the priorities of diseases due to competing interests on limited budgets. There is a possibility that policymakers do not recognize the importance of veterinary professionals in preventing human diseases originating in animals. Compared to veterinary medicine, the human health sector has produced most of the investment and research outputs related to zoonotic diseases. The public health profession may consider itself superior to the veterinary profession. Zoonotic diseases might not be recognized as threats to human health, impeding integrated policies. The effort of One Health institutionalization remained only among the donor agencies and multi-sectoral organizations. There is a need for strong political will and state capacity to overcome the existing institutional, financial, and professional barriers for its effective implementation. There is a need to assess the structural challenges, policy challenges, and the attitude of the professional working in the multiple disciplines related to One Health. Limited research has been conducted to identify the reasons behind the barriers to institutionalizing the One Health concept in South Asia. Institutionalizing One Health in responding to zoonotic diseases breaks down silos and integrates animals, humans, and the environment.

Keywords: one health, institutionalization, South Asia, institutionalizations

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Authors: Warda Khan, Remo Lachmann, Adarsh S. Garakahally

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The increasing complexity of software and its applicability in a wide range of industries, e.g., automotive, call for enhanced quality assurance techniques. Test automation is one option to tackle the prevailing challenges by supporting test engineers with fast, parallel, and repetitive test executions. A high degree of test automation allows for a shift from mundane (manual) testing tasks to a more analytical assessment of the software under test. However, a high initial investment of test resources is required to establish test automation, which is, in most cases, a limitation to the time constraints provided for quality assurance of complex software systems. Hence, a computer-aided creation of automated test cases is crucial to increase the benefit of test automation. This paper proposes the application of machine learning for the generation of automated test cases. It is based on supervised learning to analyze test specifications and existing test implementations. The analysis facilitates the identification of patterns between test steps and their implementation with test automation components. For the test case generation, this approach exploits historical data of test automation projects. The identified patterns are the foundation to predict the implementation of unknown test case specifications. Based on this support, a test engineer solely has to review and parameterize the test automation components instead of writing them manually, resulting in a significant time reduction for establishing test automation. Compared to other generation approaches, this ML-based solution can handle different writing styles, authors, application domains, and even languages. Furthermore, test automation tools require expert knowledge by means of programming skills, whereas this approach only requires historical data to generate test cases. The proposed solution is evaluated using various multi-label evaluation criteria (EC) and two small-sized real-world systems. The most prominent EC is ‘Subset Accuracy’. The promising results show an accuracy of at least 86% for test cases, where a 1:1 relationship (Multi-Class) between test step specification and test automation component exists. For complex multi-label problems, i.e., one test step can be implemented by several components, the prediction accuracy is still at 60%. It is better than the current state-of-the-art results. It is expected the prediction quality to increase for larger systems with respective historical data. Consequently, this technique facilitates the time reduction for establishing test automation and is thereby independent of the application domain and project. As a work in progress, the next steps are to investigate incremental and active learning as additions to increase the usability of this approach, e.g., in case labelled historical data is scarce.

Keywords: machine learning, multi-class, multi-label, supervised learning, test automation

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Authors: Sarah Pfoser, Lisa-Maria Putz, Thomas Berger

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In the EU, the transport sector accounts for roughly one fourth of the total greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, the transport sector is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gas emissions. Climate protection targets aim to reduce the negative effects of greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. climate change, global warming) worldwide. Achieving a modal shift to foster environmentally friendly modes of transport such as rail and inland waterways is an important strategy to fulfill the climate protection targets. The present paper goes beyond these conventional transport modes and reflects upon currently emerging high-performance transport modes that yield the potential of complementing future transport systems in an efficient way. It will be defined which properties describe high-performance transport modes, which types of technology are included and what is their potential to contribute to a sustainable future transport network. The first step of this paper is to compile state-of-the-art information about high-performance transport modes to find out which technologies are currently emerging. A multidimensional impact analysis will be conducted afterwards to evaluate which of the technologies is most promising. This analysis will be performed from a spatial, social, economic and environmental perspective. Frequently used instruments such as cost-benefit analysis and SWOT analysis will be applied for the multidimensional assessment. The estimations for the analysis will be derived based on desktop research and discussions in an interdisciplinary team of researchers. For the purpose of this work, high-performance transport modes are characterized as transport modes with very fast and very high throughput connections that could act as efficient extension to the existing transport network. The recently proposed hyperloop system represents a potential high-performance transport mode which might be an innovative supplement for the current transport networks. The idea of hyperloops is that persons and freight are shipped in a tube at more than airline speed. Another innovative technology consists in drones for freight transport. Amazon already tests drones for their parcel shipments, they aim for delivery times of 30 minutes. Drones can, therefore, be considered as high-performance transport modes as well. The Trans-European Transport Networks program (TEN-T) addresses the expansion of transport grids in Europe and also includes high speed rail connections to better connect important European cities. These services should increase competitiveness of rail and are intended to replace aviation, which is known to be a polluting transport mode. In this sense, the integration of high-performance transport modes as described above facilitates the objectives of the TEN-T program. The results of the multidimensional impact analysis will reveal potential future effects of the integration of high-performance modes into transport networks. Building on that, a recommendation on the following (research) steps can be given which are necessary to ensure the most efficient implementation and integration processes.

Keywords: drones, future transport networks, high performance transport modes, hyperloops, impact analysis

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Authors: Tal Braverman Uriel, Tal Litvak Hirsch

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Background and Objectives: Little or only partial emphasis has been placed on exploring the complexity of consensual non-monogamous relationships. The term "polyamory" refers to consensual non-monogamy, and it is defined as having emotional and/or sexual relations simultaneously with two or more people, the consent and knowledge of all the partners concerned. Managing multiple romantic relationships with different people evokes more emotions, leads to more emotional conflicts arising from different interests, and demands practical strategies. An individual's transition from a monogamous lifestyle to a consensual non-monogamous lifestyle yields new challenges, accompanied by stress, uncertainty, and question marks, as do other life-changing events, such as divorce or transition to parenthood. The study examines both the process of transition and adaptation to a consensually non-monogamous relationship, as well as the coping mechanism involved in the daily conduct of this lifestyle. The research focuses on understanding the consequences, challenges, and coping methods from a personal, marital, and familial point of view and focuses on 40 middle-aged individuals (20 men and 20 women ages 40-60). The research sheds light on a way of life that has not been previously studied in Israel and is still considered unacceptable. Theories of crisis (e.g., as Folkman and Lazarus) were applied, and as a result, a deeper understanding of the subject was reached, all while focusing on multiple aspects of dealing with stress. The basic research question examines the consequences of entering a polyamorous life from a personal point of view as an individual, partner, and parent and the ways of coping with these consequences. Method: The research is conducted with a narrative qualitative approach in the interpretive paradigm, including semi-structured in-depth interviews. The method of analysis is thematic. Results: The findings indicate that in most cases, an individual's motivation to open the relationship is mainly a longing for better sexuality and for an added layer of excitement to their lives. Most of the interviewees were assisted by their spouses in the process, as well as by social networks and podcasts on the subject. Some of them therapeutic professionals from the field are helpful. It also clearly emerged that among those who experienced acute emotional crises with the primary partner or painful separations from secondary partners, all believed polyamory to be the adequate way of life for them. Finally, a key resource for managing tension and stress is the ability to share and communicate with the primary partner. Conclusions: The study points to the challenges and benefits of a non-monogamous lifestyle as well as the use of coping mechanisms and resources that are consistent with the existing theory and research in the field in the context of life changes. The study indicates the need to expand the research canvas in the future in the context of parenting and the consequences for children.

Keywords: a-monogamy, consent, family, stress, tension

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Authors: Amirhosein Moonesi Shabestary, Eckhard Krepper, Dirk Lucas

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The current PhD project comprises CFD-modeling and simulation of condensation and heat transfer inside horizontal pipes. Condensation plays an important role in emergency cooling systems of reactors. The emergency cooling system consists of inclined horizontal pipes which are immersed in a tank of subcooled water. In the case of an accident the water level in the core is decreasing, steam comes in the emergency pipes, and due to the subcooled water around the pipe, this steam will start to condense. These horizontal pipes act as a strong heat sink which is responsible for a quick depressurization of the reactor core when any accident happens. This project is defined in order to model all these processes which happening in the emergency cooling systems. The most focus of the project is on detection of different morphologies such as annular flow, stratified flow, slug flow and plug flow. This project is an ongoing project which has been started 1 year ago in Helmholtz Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf (HZDR), Fluid Dynamics department. In HZDR most in cooperation with ANSYS different models are developed for modeling multiphase flows. Inhomogeneous MUSIG model considers the bubble size distribution and is used for modeling small-scaled dispersed gas phase. AIAD (Algebraic Interfacial Area Density Model) is developed for detection of the local morphology and corresponding switch between them. The recent model is GENTOP combines both concepts. GENTOP is able to simulate co-existing large-scaled (continuous) and small-scaled (polydispersed) structures. All these models are validated for adiabatic cases without any phase change. Therefore, the start point of the current PhD project is using the available models and trying to integrate phase transition and wall condensing models into them. In order to simplify the idea of condensation inside horizontal tubes, 3 steps have been defined. The first step is the investigation of condensation inside a horizontal tube by considering only direct contact condensation (DCC) and neglect wall condensation. Therefore, the inlet of the pipe is considered to be annular flow. In this step, AIAD model is used in order to detect the interface. The second step is the extension of the model to consider wall condensation as well which is closer to the reality. In this step, the inlet is pure steam, and due to the wall condensation, a liquid film occurs near the wall which leads to annular flow. The last step will be modeling of different morphologies which are occurring inside the tube during the condensation via using GENTOP model. By using GENTOP, the dispersed phase is able to be considered and simulated. Finally, the results of the simulations will be validated by experimental data which will be available also in HZDR.

Keywords: wall condensation, direct contact condensation, AIAD model, morphology detection

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Authors: M. J. Eichner, Y. S. Sarhan

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Overall study purpose has been the evaluation of ‘Vertical Villages’ as a new sustainable building typology, reducing significantly negative impacts of rapid urbanization processes in third world capital cities. Commonly in fast-growing cities, housing and job supply, educational and recreational opportunities, as well as public transportation infrastructure, are not accommodating rapid population growth, exposing people to high noise and emission polluted living environments with low-quality neighborhoods and a lack of recreational areas. Like many others, Egypt’s capital city Cairo, according to the UN facing annual population growth rates of up to 428.000 people, is struggling to address the general deterioration of urban living conditions. New settlements typologies and urban reconstruction approach hardly follow sustainable urbanization principles or socio-ecologic urbanization models with severe effects not only for inhabitants but also for the local environment and global climate. The authors prove that ‘Vertical Village’ buildings can offer a sustainable solution for increasing urban density with at the same time improving the living quality and urban environment significantly. Inserting them within high-density urban fabrics the ecologic and socio-cultural conditions of low-quality neighborhoods can be transformed towards districts, considering all needs of sustainable and social urban life. This study analyzes existing building typologies in Cairo’s «low quality - high density» districts Ard el Lewa, Dokki and Mohandesen according to benchmarks for sustainable residential buildings, identifying major problems and deficits. In 3 case study design projects, the sustainable transformation potential through ‘Vertical Village’ buildings are laid out and comparative studies show the improvement of the urban microclimate, safety, social diversity, sense of community, aesthetics, privacy, efficiency, healthiness and accessibility. The main result of the paper is that the disadvantages of density and overpopulation in developing countries can be converted with ‘Vertical Village’ buildings into advantages, achieving attractive and environmentally friendly living environments with multiple synergies. The paper is documenting based on scientific criteria that mixed-use vertical building structures, designed according to sustainable principles of low rise housing, can serve as an alternative to convert «low quality - high density» districts in megacities, opening a pathway for governments to achieve sustainable urban transformation goals. Neglected informal urban districts, home to millions of the poorer population groups, can be converted into healthier living and working environments.

Keywords: sustainable, architecture, urbanization, urban transformation, vertical village

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Authors: Meirav Eshkol, Miri Blaufeld, Rinat Basal

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Aim: The working environment in rural clinics is often isolated and distant from major health centers. In these circumstances, rural health care faces numerous challenges. The hope is that, in the immediate future and in the medium and long range, the rural nursing staff will realize their full professional and personal potential to their own satisfaction and to the health and welfare of their patients. Background: Rural nurses work mostly alone or with very few colleagues, and have the authority to make professional decisions, a fact which often requires them to make critical decisions in pressure situations. In addition, the expectations set for these nurses are extremely high, a fact which requires them to be extremely skilled and to fulfill their professional potential. They are required to provide high-quality and comprehensive care to the individual, the family, and the community and to maintain close interaction with the community. Work in a rural setting requires the flexibility to perform multiple tasks in an isolated setting, often far removed from major health centers. In order to maintain professional satisfaction for the rural nurse, expanded direction and training are required in professional know-how, and in the development of new and existing skills, toward the goal of treating a diverse population and to obtain a comprehensive view of the components of a diagnosis for treatment and to develop an understanding appropriate to the presented reality. Objective: To provide knowledge and to expand and develop professional skills in the prevention and advancement of health in the care of a diverse patient population. The development of strategies and skills for work under pressure alone instills expertise in performing multiple tasks in diverse disciplines. To reduce feelings of stress and burnout. Methodology: This course is the first and one of a kind in Clalit - the biggest health organisation in Israel. Observing and identifying the needs of the nurses in the field relating to the development of professional and personal skills defining goals and objectives, and determining the content of a course designed for rural nurses and kibbutz nurses who are not Clalit employees. Results: 43 nurses participated and 30 answered the feedback questionnaire. The rating of their experience was 4.33 (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the highest ranking). 92% indicated the importance of meeting with additional nurses to teach their colleagues. 83% of the nurses indicated an increased sense of organizational belonging. 60% indicated that the course helped to reduce feelings of stress and burnout in becoming a better rural nurse. 80% indicated that the course helped them establish intra-organizational professional cooperation and initiating processes. Conclusion: The course is an instrument which aids in increasing the feeling of organizational belonging, reducing feelings of stress and burnout, creation of relationships and cooperation both within and outside of the organization, increased the realization of the potential of the village nurse.

Keywords: rural nurse, alone, burnout, multiple tasks

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Authors: Maturos Chongchaikit, Sitthikorn Sumalee, Nopphawan Chimroylarp, Nongluck Manowaluilou, Thapanee Thammetha

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The 2015 Kasetsart University Research Plan, which was funded by the National Research Institutes: TRF – NRCT, comprises four sub-research projects on the development of three OER websites and on their usage study by students in international programs. The goals were to develop the open educational resources (OER) in the form of websites that will promote three key skills of quality learning and achievement: Academic English, Educational Research, and ICT Literacy, to graduate students in international programs of Thailand. The statistics from the Office of Higher Education showed that the number of foreign students who come to study in international higher education of Thailand has increased respectively by 25 percent per year, proving that the international education system and institutes of Thailand have been already recognized regionally and globally as meeting the standards. The output of the plan: the OER websites and their materials, and the outcome: students’ learning improvement due to lecturers’ readiness for open educational media, will ultimately lead the country to higher business capabilities for international education services in ASEAN Community in the future. The OER innovation is aimed at sharing quality knowledge to the world, with the adoption of Creative Commons Licenses that makes sharing be able to do freely (5Rs openness), without charge and leading to self and life-long learning. The research has brought the problems on the low usage of existing OER in the English language to develop the OER on three specific skills and try them out with the sample of 100 students randomly selected from the international graduate programs of top 10 Thai universities, according to QS Asia University Rankings 2014. The R&D process was used for product evaluation in 2 stages: the development stage and the usage study stage. The research tools were the questionnaires for content and OER experts, the questionnaires for the sample group and the open-ended interviews for the focus group discussions. The data were analyzed using frequency, percentage, mean and SD. The findings revealed that the developed websites were fully qualified as OERs by the experts. The students’ opinions and satisfaction were at the highest levels for both the content and the technology used for presentation. The usage manual and self-assessment guide were finalized during the focus group discussions. The direct participation according to the concept of 5Rs Openness Activities through the provided tools of OER models like MERLOT and OER COMMONS, as well as the development of usage manual and self-assessment guide, were revealed as a key approach to further extend the output widely and sustainably to the network of users in various higher education institutions.

Keywords: open educational resources, international education services business, academic English, educational research, ICT literacy, international graduate program, OER

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Authors: Ming Zhou, Taeho Park

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Early stage technologies have been particularly challenging to manage due to high degrees of their numerous uncertainties. Most research results directly out of a research lab tend to be at their early, if not the infant stage. A long while uncertain commercialization process awaits these lab results. The majority of such lab technologies go nowhere and never get commercialized due to various reasons. Any efforts or financial resources put into managing these technologies turn fruitless. High stake naturally calls for better results, which make a patenting decision harder to make. A good and well protected patent goes a long way for commercialization of the technology. Our preliminary research showed that there was not a simple yet productive procedure for such valuation. Most of the studies now have been theoretical and overly comprehensive where practical suggestions were non-existent. Hence, we attempted to develop a simple and highly implementable procedure for efficient and scalable valuation. We thoroughly reviewed existing research, interviewed practitioners in the Silicon Valley area, and surveyed university technology offices. Instead of presenting another theoretical and exhaustive research, we aimed at developing a practical guidance that a government agency and/or university office could easily deploy and get things moving to later steps of managing early stage technologies. We provided a procedure to thriftily value and make the patenting decision. A patenting index was developed using survey data and expert opinions. We identified the most important factors to be used in the patenting decision using survey ratings. The rating then assisted us in generating good relative weights for the later scoring and weighted averaging step. More importantly, we validated our procedure by testing it with our practitioner contacts. Their inputs produced a general yet highly practical cut schedule. Such schedule of realistic practices has yet to be witnessed our current research. Although a technology office may choose to deviate from our cuts, what we offered here at least provided a simple and meaningful starting point. This procedure was welcomed by practitioners in our expert panel and university officers in our interview group. This research contributed to our current understanding and practices of managing early stage technologies by instating a heuristically simple yet theoretical solid method for the patenting decision. Our findings generated top decision factors, decision processes and decision thresholds of key parameters. This research offered a more practical perspective which further completed our extant knowledge. Our results could be impacted by our sample size and even biased a bit by our focus on the Silicon Valley area. Future research, blessed with bigger data size and more insights, may want to further train and validate our parameter values in order to obtain more consistent results and analyze our decision factors for different industries.

Keywords: technology management, early stage technology, patent, decision

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Authors: Claudia Rodriguez-Espinosa, Erika Elizabeth Pérez Múzquiz

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Since the creation of the “Pueblos Mágicos” program in 2001, a series of social and cultural events had directly affected the heritage conservation of the 121 registered localities until 2018, when the federal government terminated the program. Many studies have been carried out that seek to analyze from different perspectives and disciplines the consequences that these appointments have generated in the “Pueblos Mágicos.” Multidisciplinary groups such as the one headed by Carmen Valverde and Liliana López Levi, have brought together specialists from all over the Mexican Republic to create a set of diagnoses of most of these settlements, and although each one has unique specificities, there is a constant in most of them that has to do with the loss of cultural heritage and that is related to transculturality. There are several factors identified that have fostered a cultural loss, as a direct reflection of the economic crisis that prevails in Mexico. It is important to remember that the origin of this program had as its main objective to promote the growth and development of local economies since one of the conditions for entering the program is that they have less than 20,000 inhabitants. With this goal in mind, one of the first actions that many “Pueblos Mágicos” carried out was to improve or create an infrastructure to receive both national and foreign tourists since this was practically non-existent. Creating hotels, restaurants, cafes, training certified tour guides, among other actions, have led to one of the great problems they face: globalization. Although by itself it is not bad, its impact in many cases has been negative for heritage conservation. The entry into and contact with new cultures has led to the undervaluation of cultural traditions, their transformation and even their total loss. This work seeks to present specific cases of transformation and loss of cultural heritage, as well as to reflect on the problem and propose scenarios in which the negative effects can be reversed. For this text, 36 “Pueblos Mágicos” have been selected for study, based on those settlements that are cited in volumes I and IV (the first and last of the collection) of the series produced by the multidisciplinary group led by Carmen Valverde and Liliana López Levi (researchers from UNAM and UAM Xochimilco respectively) in the project supported by CONACyT entitled “Pueblos Mágicos. An interdisciplinary vision”, of which we are part. This sample is considered representative since it forms 30% of the total of 121 “Pueblos Mágicos” existing at that moment. With this information, the elements of its intangible heritage loss or transformation have been identified in every chapter based on the texts written by the participants of that project. Finally, this text shows an analysis of the effects that this federal program, as a public policy applied to 132 populations, has had on the conservation or transformation of the intangible cultural heritage of the “Pueblos Mágicos.” Transculturality, globalization, the creation of identities and the desire to increase the flow of tourists have impacted the changes that traditions (main intangible cultural heritage) have had in the 18 years that the federal program lasted.

Keywords: public policies, cultural tourism, heritage preservation, pueblos mágicos program

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Authors: Markéta Chmelíková, David Ullrich, Iva Burešová

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The paper maps the possibilities and limits of diagnosing selected personality and performance characteristics of military leadership and psychology students in the context of coping with challenging situations. Individuals vary greatly inter-individually in their ability to effectively manage extreme situations, yet existing diagnostic tools are often criticized mainly for their low predictive power. Nowadays, every modern army focuses primarily on the systematic minimization of potential risks, including the prediction of desirable forms of behavior and the performance of military commanders. The context of military leadership is well known for its life-threatening nature. Therefore, it is crucial to research stress load in the specific context of military leadership for the purpose of possible anticipation of human failure in managing extreme situations of military leadership. The aim of the submitted pilot study, using an experiment of 24 hours duration, is to verify the possibilities of a specific combination of psychodiagnostic to predict people who possess suitable equipment for coping with increased stress load. In our pilot study, we conducted an experiment of 24 hours duration with an experimental group (N=13) in the bomb shelter and a control group (N=11) in a classroom. Both groups were represented by military leadership students (N=11) and psychology students (N=13). Both groups were equalized in terms of study type and gender. Participants were administered the following test battery of personality characteristics: Big Five Inventory 2 (BFI-2), Short Dark Triad (SD-3), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS), and Impulsive Behavior Scale (UPPS-P). This test battery was administered only once at the beginning of the experiment. Along with this, they were administered a test battery consisting of the Test of Attention (d2) and the Bourdon test four times overall with 6 hours ranges. To better simulate an extreme situation – we tried to induce sleep deprivation - participants were required to try not to fall asleep throughout the experiment. Despite the assumption that a stay in an underground bomb shelter will manifest in impaired cognitive performance, this expectation has been significantly confirmed in only one measurement, which can be interpreted as marginal in the context of multiple testing. This finding is a fundamental insight into the issue of stress management in extreme situations, which is crucial for effective military leadership. The results suggest that a 24-hour stay in a shelter, together with sleep deprivation, does not seem to simulate sufficient stress for an individual, which would be reflected in the level of cognitive performance. In the context of these findings, it would be interesting in future to extend the diagnostic battery with physiological indicators of stress, such as: heart rate, stress score, physical stress, mental stress ect.

Keywords: bomb shelter, extreme situation, military leadership, psychodiagnostic

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Authors: Alexis Polanco Jr, Tsai Lu Liu

Abstract:

Research on digital assessment for deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students is negligible. Part of this stems from the DHH assessment design existing at the intersection of the emergent disciplines of usability, accessibility, and child-computer interaction (CCI). While these disciplines have some prevailing guidelines —e.g. in user experience design (UXD), there is Jacob Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics (Nielsen-10); for accessibility, there are the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) & the Principles of Universal Design (PUD)— this research was unable to uncover a unified set of guidelines. Given that digital assessments have lasting implications for the funding and shaping of U.S. school districts, it is vital that cross-disciplinary guidelines emerge. As a result, this research seeks to provide a framework by which these disciplines can share knowledge. The framework entails a process of asking subject-matter experts (SMEs) and design & development professionals to self-describe their fields of expertise, how their work might serve DHH students, and to expose any incongruence between their ideal process and what is permissible at their workplace. This research used two rounds of mixed methods. The first round consisted of structured interviews with SMEs in usability, accessibility, CCI, and DHH education. These practitioners were not designers by trade but were revealed to use designerly work processes. In addition to asking these SMEs about their field of expertise, work process, etc., these SMEs were asked to comment about whether they believed Nielsen-10 and/or PUD were sufficient for designing products for middle-school DHH students. This first round of interviews revealed that Nielsen-10 and PUD were, at best, a starting point for creating middle-school DHH design guidelines or, at worst insufficient. The second round of interviews followed a semi-structured interview methodology. The SMEs who were interviewed in the first round were asked open-ended follow-up questions about their semantic understanding of guidelines— going from the most general sense down to the level of design guidelines for DHH middle school students. Designers and developers who were never interviewed previously were asked the same questions that the SMEs had been asked across both rounds of interviews. In terms of the research goals: it was confirmed that the design of digital assessments for DHH students is inherently cross-disciplinary. Unexpectedly, 1) guidelines did not emerge from the interviews conducted in this study, and 2) the principles of Nielsen-10 and PUD were deemed to be less relevant than expected. Given the prevalence of Nielsen-10 in UXD curricula across academia and certificate programs, this poses a risk to the efficacy of DHH assessments designed by UX designers. Furthermore, the following findings emerged: A) deep collaboration between the disciplines of usability, accessibility, and CCI is low to non-existent; B) there are no universally agreed-upon guidelines for designing digital assessments for DHH middle school students; C) these disciplines are structured academically and professionally in such a way that practitioners may not know to reach out to other disciplines. For example, accessibility teams at large organizations do not have designers and accessibility specialists on the same team.

Keywords: deaf, hard of hearing, design, guidelines, education, assessment

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Authors: Kim Haekyoung, Au Yunkyoung

Abstract:

As digital technology continues to advance and become more widely accessible, young children are also growing up experiencing various media from infancy. In this changing environment, educating young children on media literacy has become an increasingly important task. With the diversification of media, it has become more necessary for children to understand, utilize, and critically explore the meaning of multimodal texts, which include text, images, and sounds connected to each other. Early childhood is a period when media literacy can bloom, and educational and policy support are needed to enable young children to express their opinions, communicate, and participate fully. However, most current media literacy education for young children focuses solely on teaching how to use media, with limited practical application and utilization. Therefore, this study aims to develop an inquiry-based media literacy education program for young children using topic-specific media content and explore the program's potential and impact on children's media literacy learning. Based on a theoretical and literature review on media literacy education, analysis of existing educational programs, and a survey on the current status and teacher perception of media literacy education for young children, this study developed a media literacy education program for young children considering the components of media literacy (understanding media characteristics, self-regulation, self-expression, critical understanding, ethical norms, social communication). To verify the effectiveness of the program, it was implemented with 20 five-year-old children from C City S Kindergarten, starting from March 24 to May 26, 2022, once a week for a total of 6 sessions. To explore quantitative changes before and after program implementation, repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted, and qualitative analysis was used to analyze observed changes in the process. significant improvement in media literacy levels, such as understanding media characteristics, self-regulation, self-expression, critical understanding, ethical norms, and social communication. The developed inquiry-based media literacy education program for young children in this study can be effectively applied to enhance children's media literacy education and help improve their media literacy levels. Observed changes in the process also confirmed that children improved their ability to learn various topics, express their thoughts, and communicate with others using media content. These findings emphasize the importance of developing and implementing media literacy education programs and can help children develop the ability to safely and effectively use media in their media environment. Based on exploring the potential and impact of the inquiry-based media literacy education program for young children, this study confirmed positive changes in children's media literacy levels as a result of the program's implementation. These findings suggest that beyond education on how to use media, it can help develop children's ability to safely and effectively use media in their media environment. Furthermore, to improve children's media literacy levels and create a safe media environment, a variety of content and methodologies are needed, and continuous development and evaluation of educational programs are anticipated.

Keywords: young children, media literacy, media literacy education program, media content

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