Search results for: psychological-physical constraints

Authors: Juan Manuel Macia

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The Montreal Port Authority (MPA) wanted to build a new road link via Souligny Avenue to increase the fluidity of goods transported by truck in the Viau Street area of Montreal and to mitigate the current traffic problems on Notre-Dame Street. With the purpose of having a better integration and acceptance of this project with the neighboring residential surroundings, this project needed to include an architectural integration, bringing some artistic components to the bridge design along with some landscaping components. The MPA is required primarily to provide direct truck access to Port of Montreal with a direct connection to the future Assomption Boulevard planned by the City of Montreal and, thus, direct access to Souligny Avenue. The MPA also required other key aspects to be considered for the proposal and development of the project, such as the layout of road and rail configurations, the reconstruction of underground structures, the relocation of power lines, the installation of lighting systems, the traffic signage and communication systems improvement, the construction of new access ramps, the pavement reconstruction and a summary assessment of the structural capacity of an existing service tunnel. The identification of the various possible scenarios began by identifying all the constraints related to the numerous infrastructures located in the area of the future link between the port and the future extension of Souligny Avenue, involving interaction with several disciplines and technical specialties. Several viaduct- and tunnel-type geometries were studied to link the port road to the right-of-way north of Notre-Dame Street and to improve traffic flow at the railway corridor. The proposed design took into account the existing access points to Port of Montreal, the built environment of the MPA site, the provincial and municipal rights-of-way, and the future Notre-Dame Street layout planned by the City of Montreal. These considerations required the installation of an engineering structure with a span of over 60 m to free up a corridor for the future urban fabric of Notre-Dame Street. The best option for crossing this span length was identified by the design and construction of a curved bridge over Notre-Dame Street, which is essentially a structure with a deck formed by a reinforced concrete slab on steel box girders with a single span of 63.5m. The foundation units were defined as pier-cap type abutments on drilled shafts to bedrock with rock sockets, with MSE-type walls at the approaches. The configuration of a single-span curved structure posed significant design and construction challenges, considering the major constraints of the project site, a design for durability approach, and the need to guarantee optimum performance over a 75-year service life in accordance with the client's needs and the recommendations and requirements defined by the standards used for the project. These aspects and the need to include architectural and artistic components in this project made it possible to design, build, and integrate a signature infrastructure project with a sustainable approach, from which the MPA, the commuters, and the city of Montreal and its residents will benefit.

Keywords: curved bridge, steel box girder, medium span, simply supported, industrial and urban environment, architectural integration, design for durability

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Authors: Hamza Salih

Abstract:

Since translation is no longer viewed as a mere replacement of linguistic codes from one language to another, it has increasingly been considered, especially with the advent of the cultural turn in the late 70's, in relation to the broader external context in which it takes place. According to scholars in the field, the translation process is determined by the political, economic and cultural values which exert external pressures on the translator. Correspondingly, the relationship between translation as an act of re-writing the original text and ideology has already been established. This paper addresses the issue of how ideology comes into play in the translational process and what strategies the translator adopts to foreground or circumvent ideological constraints. Along with this, the paper will touch upon the notions of censorship, manipulation, subversion and domestication which are deemed of relevance to this very topic. In fact, after the domination of the empirically-oriented linguistic approaches in translation studies, the relationship between translation and ideology has to be foregrounded to draw attention to the fact that the translation process is not a mere text-to-text linguistic transfer, but, on the contrary, takes place in the midst of economic, political, cultural and religious variables, which some scholars subsume under the category ideology.

Keywords: translation, language, ideology, subversion, censorship and manipulation

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Authors: Miran Ismail

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COVID-19 has caused widespread disruption in all economical sectors and industries around the world. The COVID-19 lockdown measures have resulted in production halts, restrictions on persons and goods movement, border closures, logistical constraints, and a slowdown in trade and economic activity. The main subject of this paper is to leverage technology to manage the supply chain effectively and efficiently through the usage of artificial intelligence. The research methodology is based on empirical data collected through a questionnaire survey. One of the approaches utilized is a case study of industrial organizations that face obstacles such as high operational costs, large inventory levels, a lack of well-established supplier relationships, human behavior, and system issues. The main contribution of this research to the body of knowledge is the empirical insights and on supply chain sustainability performance measurement. The results provide guidelines for the selection of advanced technologies to support supply chain processes and for the design of sustainable performance measurement systems.

Keywords: information technology, artificial intelligence, supply chain management, industrial organizations

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Authors: Enes Furkan Erkan, Özer Uygun, Halil Ibrahim Demir, Zeynep Demir

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Companies require increase in quality perception level of their products due to competitive conditions. As a result, the tendency to quality and researches to develop the quality are increasing day by day. Cost and time constraints are the biggest problems that companies face in their quality improvement efforts. In this study, factors that affect the porosity of ceramic products are determined and analyzed in a factory producing ceramic tiles. Then, Taguchi method is used in the design phase in order to decrease the number of tests to be performed by means of orthogonal sequences. The most important factors affecting the porosity of ceramic tiles are determined using Taguchi and ANOVA analysis. Based on the analyses, the most affecting factors are determined to be used in the fuzzy implementation stage. Then, the fuzzy rules were established with the factors affecting porosity by the experts’ opinion. Thus, porosity result could be obtained not only for the specified factor levels but also for intermediate values. In this way, it has been provided convenience to the factory in terms of cost and quality improvement.

Keywords: fuzzy, porosity, Taguchi Method, Taguchi-Fuzzy

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Authors: Nermine A. Harraz, Aliaa Abouali

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The retail stores put up for sale multiple items while the spaces in the backroom and display areas constitute a scarce resource. Availability, volume, and location of the product displayed in the showroom influence the customer’s demand. Managing these operations individually will result in sub-optimal overall retail store’s profit; therefore, a non-linear integer programming model (NLIP) is developed to determine the inventory replenishment and shelf space allocation decisions that together maximize the retailer’s profit under shelf space and backroom storage constraints taking into consideration that the demand rate is positively dependent on the amount and location of items displayed in the showroom. The developed model is solved using LINGO® software. The NLIP model is implemented in a real world case study in a large retail outlet providing a large variety of products. The proposed model is validated and shows logical results when using the experimental data collected from the market.

Keywords: retailing management, inventory replenishment, shelf space allocation, showroom, backroom

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Authors: V. Sathya Narayanan, P. Sidharth, V. R. Sanal Kumar

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The success of any retail business is predisposed by its swift response and its knack in understanding the constraints and the requirements of customers. In this paper a conceptual design model of an automated customer-friendly supermarket has been proposed. In this model a 10-sided, space benefited, regular polygon shaped gravity shelves have been designed for goods storage and effective customer-specific algorithms have been built-in for quick automatic delivery of the randomly listed goods. The algorithm is developed with two main objectives, viz., delivery time and priority. For meeting these objectives the randomly listed items are reorganized according to the critical-path of the robotic arm specific to the identified shop and its layout and the items are categorized according to the demand, shape, size, similarity and nature of the product for an efficient pick-up, packing and delivery process. We conjectured that the proposed automated supermarket model reduces business operating costs with much customer satisfaction warranting a win-win situation.

Keywords: automated supermarket, electronic shopping, polygon-shaped rack, shortest path algorithm for shopping

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Authors: Kenichiro Hida, Shin-Ichi Kuribayashi

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In a conventional network, most network devices, such as routers, are dedicated devices that do not have much variation in capacity. In recent years, a new concept of network functions virtualisation (NFV) has come into use. The intention is to implement a variety of network functions with software on general-purpose servers and this allows the network operator to select their capacities and locations without any constraints. This paper focuses on the allocation of NFV-based routing functions which are one of critical network functions, and presents the virtual routing function allocation algorithm that minimizes the total power consumption. In addition, this study presents the useful allocation policy of virtual routing functions, based on an evaluation with a ladder-shaped network model. This policy takes the ratio of the power consumption of a routing function to that of a circuit and traffic distribution between areas into consideration. Furthermore, the present paper shows that there are cases where the use of NFV-based routing functions makes it possible to reduce the total power consumption dramatically, in comparison to a conventional network, in which it is not economically viable to distribute small-capacity routing functions.

Keywords: NFV, resource allocation, virtual routing function, minimum power consumption

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Authors: Mohammad E. Nikoofal, Mehmet Gumus

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Besides the many benefits of outsourcing, firms are still concerned about the lack of critical information regarding both the risk levels and actions of their suppliers that are just a few links away. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of audit for the manufacturer in managing her supplier’s process improvement effort when the supplier is privately informed about his disruption risk and actions. By comparing the agency costs associated with the optimal menu of contracts with and without audit, we completely characterize the value of audit for all the cases from the perspectives of both manufacturer, and supplier as well as total supply chain. First, the analysis of value of audit from the manufacturer’s perspective shows that she can strictly benefit from auditing her supplier’s actions. To the best of our knowledge, this result has not been documented before in the principal-agent literature under a standard setting where the agent is assumed to be risk-neutral and not protected by limited liability constraints. Second, we find that not only the manufacturer but also the supplier can strictly benefit from audit. Third, the audit enables the manufacturer to customize her contract offerings based on the reliability of the supplier. Finally, by analyzing the impact of problem parameters on the value of audit, we identify the conditions under which an audit would be beneficial for individual supply chain parties as well as total supply chain.

Keywords: supply disruption, adverse selection, moral hazard incentives, audit

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Authors: John Chan, Jake Linnenbank, Gavin Caird

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Automatic Selective Door Operation (ASDO) systems are increasingly used in railways to provide Correct Side Door Enable (CSDE) protection as well as to protect passenger doors opening off the platform where the train is longer than the platform, or in overshoot or undershoot scenarios. Such ASDO systems typically utilise trackside-installed RFID beacons, such as Eurobalises for odometry positioning purposes. Installing such trackside infrastructure may not be desirable or possible due to various factors such as conflict with existing infrastructure, potential damage from track tamping and jurisdiction constraints. Ultra-wideband (UWB) positioning technology could enable ASDO positioning requirements to be met without requiring installation of equipment directly on track since UWB technology can be installed on adjacent infrastructure such as on platforms. This paper will explore the feasibility of upgrading existing ASDO systems with UWB positioning technology, the feasibility of retrofitting UWB-enabled ASDO systems onto unfitted trains, and any other considerations relating to the use of UWB positioning for ASDO applications.

Keywords: UWB, ASDO, automatic selective door operations, CSDE, correct side door enable

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Authors: Alexis John de Britto

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Studies were performed to select the superior genotypes based on intra-specific variations, caused by phytogeographical, climatic and edaphic parameters of three anti cancer drug yielding mangrove plants such as Acanthus ilicifolius L., Calophyllum inophyllum L. and Excoecaria agallocha L. using ISSR (Inter Simple Sequence Repeats) markers and phytochemical analysis such as preliminary phytochemical tests, TLC, HPTLC, HPLC and antioxidant tests. The plants were collected from five different geographical locations of the East Coast of south India. Genetic heterozygosity, Nei’s gene diversity, Shannon’s information index and Percentage of polymorphism between the populations were calculated using POPGENE software. Cluster analysis was performed using UPGMA algorithm. AMOVA and correlations between genetic diversity and soil factors were analyzed. Combining the molecular and phytochemical variations superior genotypes were selected. Conservation constraints and methods of efficient exploitation of the species are discussed.

Keywords: anti-cancer drug yielding plants, DNA fingerprinting, phytochemical analysis, selection of superior genotypes

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Authors: Yousif Mohamed Y. Abdallah, Razan Manofely, Rajab M. Ben Yousef

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X-Ray images are very popular as a first tool for diagnosis. Automating the process of analysis of such images is important in order to help physician procedures. In this practice, teeth segmentation from the radiographic images and feature extraction are essential steps. The main objective of this study was to study correction preprocessing of x-rays images using local adaptive filters in order to evaluate contrast enhancement pattern in different x-rays images such as grey color and to evaluate the usage of new nonlinear approach for contrast enhancement of soft tissues in x-rays images. The data analyzed by using MatLab program to enhance the contrast within the soft tissues, the gray levels in both enhanced and unenhanced images and noise variance. The main techniques of enhancement used in this study were contrast enhancement filtering and deblurring images using the blind deconvolution algorithm. In this paper, prominent constraints are firstly preservation of image's overall look; secondly, preservation of the diagnostic content in the image and thirdly detection of small low contrast details in diagnostic content of the image.

Keywords: enhancement, x-rays, pixel intensity values, MatLab

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Authors: Maryam Sadeghi, Claude Bazin, Daniel Hodouin, Laura Perez Barnuevo

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The performance of a separation process is usually evaluated using performance indices calculated from elemental assays readily available from the chemical analysis laboratory. However, the separation process performance is essentially related to the properties of the minerals that carry the elements and not those of the elements. Since elements or metals can be carried by valuable and gangue minerals in the ore and that each mineral responds differently to a mineral processing method, the use of only elemental assays could lead to erroneous or uncertain conclusions on the process performance. This paper discusses the advantages of using performance indices calculated from minerals content, such as minerals recovery, for process performance assessments. A method is presented that uses elemental assays to estimate the minerals content of the solids in various process streams. The method combines the stoichiometric composition of the minerals and constraints of mass conservation for the minerals through the concentration process to estimate the minerals content from elemental assays. The advantage of assessing a concentration process using mineral based performance indices is illustrated for an iron ore concentration circuit.

Keywords: data reconciliation, iron ore concentration, mineral composition, process performance assessment

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Authors: Daljinder Singh, J.S.Dhillon, Balraj Singh

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According to no free lunch theorem, a single search technique cannot perform best in all conditions. Optimization method can be attractive choice to solve optimization problem that may have exclusive advantages like robust and reliable performance, global search capability, little information requirement, ease of implementation, parallelism, no requirement of differentiable and continuous objective function. In order to synergize between exploration and exploitation and to further enhance the performance of Bat algorithm, the paper proposed a modified bat algorithm that adds additional search procedure based on bat’s previous experience. The proposed algorithm is used for solving the economic load dispatch (ELD) problem. The practical constraint such valve-point loading along with power balance constraints and generator limit are undertaken. To take care of power demand constraint variable elimination method is exploited. The proposed algorithm is tested on various ELD problems. The results obtained show that the proposed algorithm is capable of performing better in majority of ELD problems considered and is at par with existing algorithms for some of problems.

Keywords: bat algorithm, economic load dispatch, penalty method, variable elimination method

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Authors: Mallikarjuna Rao Yamarthy, Subramanyam Makam Venkata, Satya Prasad Kodati

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The main objective of the proposed work is to reduce the overall network traffic incurred by mobility management, packet delivery cost and to increase the resource utilization. The proposed algorithm, An Efficient Resource Management Algorithm (ERMA) for mobility management in wireless mesh networks, relies on pointer based mobility management scheme. Whenever a mesh client moves from one mesh router to another, the pointer is set up dynamically between the previous mesh router and current mesh router based on the distance constraints. The algorithm evaluated for signaling cost, data delivery cost and total communication cost performance metrics. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated for both internet sessions and intranet sessions. The proposed algorithm yields significantly better performance in terms of signaling cost, data delivery cost, and total communication cost.

Keywords: data delivery cost, mobility management, pointer forwarding, resource management, wireless mesh networks

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Authors: I. O. Nascimento, J. T. Manzi

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The drying process is an important operation in the chemical industry and it is widely used in the food, grain industry and fertilizer industry. However, for demanding a considerable consumption of energy, such a process requires a deep energetic analysis in order to reduce operating costs. This paper deals with thermodynamic optimization applied to rotary dryers based on the entropy production minimization, aiming at to reduce the energy consumption. To do this, the mass, energy and entropy balance was used for developing a relationship that represents the rate of entropy production. The use of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is essential because it takes into account constraints of nature. Since the entropy production rate is minimized, optimals conditions of operations can be established and the process can obtain a substantial gain in energy saving. The minimization strategy had been led using classical methods such as Lagrange multipliers and implemented in the MATLAB platform. As expected, the preliminary results reveal a significant energy saving by the application of the optimal parameters found by the procedure of the entropy minimization It is important to say that this method has shown easy implementation and low cost.

Keywords: thermodynamic optimization, drying, entropy minimization, modeling dryers

Procedia PDF Downloads 241

Authors: Hocini Yousra, Medjnoun Amal, Khiatine Mohamed, Bahar Ramdane

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The development of the regions of southern Algeria require the construction of numerous road, rail, and airport infrastructures. However, this development is very expensive given the very severe climatic conditions, the difficulty of reusing local materials, and the unavailability of water on the project sites; these regions are characterized by an arid or semi-arid climate, which means that water sources are very limited. The climatic conditions and the scarcity of water make soil compaction work very difficult and excessively expensive. These constraints related to the supply of water for irrigation of these construction sites make it necessary to examine the solution of compaction with low water content. This work studies the possibility of improving the compaction with a low water content of the soils of southern Algeria and this by using natural or recycled ecological materials. Local soils are first subjected to a series of laboratory characterization tests, then mixed with varying amounts of natural additives. The new materials are, in turn, subjected to road tests.

Keywords: compaction, low water content, sand, natural materials

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Authors: Safdari Reza, Zahmatkeshan Maryam, Goli Arji

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Background and Aim: Urban health is one of the challenges of the 21st century. Rapid growth and expanding urbanization have implications for health. In this regard, information technology can remove a large number of modern cities’ problems. Therefore, the present article aims to study modern information technologies in the development of urban health. Materials and Methods:. This is a review article based on library research and Internet searches on valid websites such as Science Direct, Magiran, Springer and advanced searches in Google. Some 164 domestic and foreign texts were studied on such topics as the application of ICT tools including cell phones and wireless tools, GIS, and RFID in the field of urban health in 2011. Finally, 30 sources were used. Conclusion: Information and communication technologies play an important role in improving people's health and enhancing the quality of their lives. Effective utilization of information and communication technologies requires the identification of opportunities and constraints, and the formulation of appropriate planning principles with regard to social and economic factors together with preparing the technological, communication and telecommunications, legal and administrative infrastructures.

Keywords: Urban Health, Information Technology, Information & Communication, Technology

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Authors: P. Parthiban, Sonu Rajak, R. Dhanalakshmi

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This paper presents an Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) approach, combined with a Speed Optimization Algorithm (SOA) to solve the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) with environmental considerations, which is well known as Pollution-Routing Problem (PRP). It consists of routing a number of vehicles to serve a set of customers, and determining fuel consumption, driver wages and their speed on each route segment, while respecting the capacity constraints and time windows. Since VRP is NP-hard problem, so PRP also a NP-hard problem, which requires metaheuristics to solve this type of problems. The proposed solution method consists of two stages. Stage one is to solve a Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Window (VRPTW) using ACO and in the second stage, a SOA is run on the resulting VRPTW solution. Given a vehicle route, the SOA consists of finding the optimal speed on each arc of the route to minimize an objective function comprising fuel consumption costs and driver wages. The proposed algorithm tested on benchmark problem, the preliminary results show that the proposed algorithm can provide good solutions within reasonable computational time.

Keywords: ant colony optimization, CO2 emissions, speed optimization, vehicle routing

Procedia PDF Downloads 335

Authors: Carole A. El Raheb, Hassan K. Abdel-Salam, Ingi Elcherif

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An architect carrying the design process alone is the main reason for the deterioration of the quality of the architectural product as the complexity of the projects makes it a multi-disciplinary work; then, the Integrative Design Process (IDP) must be applied in the architectural firm especially from the early design phases to improve the product’s quality and to eliminate the ignorance of the principles of design causing the occurrence of low-grade buildings. The research explores the Integrative Design (ID) principles that fit in the architectural practice. Constraints facing this application are presented with strategies and solutions to overcome them. A survey questionnaire was conducted to collect data from a number of recognized Egyptian Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) firms that explores their opinions on using the IDP. This survey emphasizes the importance of the IDP in firms and presents the reasons preventing the firms from applying the IDP. The aim here is to investigate the potentials of integrating this approach into architectural firms emphasizing the importance of this application which ensures the realization of the project’s goal and eliminates the reduction in the project’s quality.

Keywords: application, architectural firms, integrative design principles, integrative design process, the project quality

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Authors: Cuong D. Dao, Rob J.I. Basten, Andreas Hartmann

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This paper studies the optimal maintenance planning of preventive maintenance and renewal activities for components in a single railway track when the available time for maintenance is limited. The rail-track system consists of several types of components, such as rail, ballast, and switches with different preventive maintenance and renewal intervals. To perform maintenance or renewal on the track, a train free period for maintenance, called a possession, is required. Since a major possession directly affects the regular train schedule, maintenance and renewal activities are clustered as much as possible. In a highly dense and utilized railway network, the possession time on the track is critical since the demand for train operations is very high and a long possession has a severe impact on the regular train schedule. We present an optimization model and investigate the maintenance schedules with and without the possession capacity constraint. In addition, we also integrate the social-economic cost related to the effects of the maintenance time to the variable possession cost into the optimization model. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the model.

Keywords: rail-track components, maintenance, optimal clustering, possession capacity

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Authors: Temitope Adewale, Oladapo Raji

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The study was designed to investigate the assessment of women's involvement in fishing. In order to give the study a direction, five research questions, as well as two hypotheses, were postulated, and a total of fifty (50) respondents each were selected from two local government areas for the study. This brings a total of one hundred (100) respondents selected from these local government areas in Lagos state. The outcome of the finding indicates that the percentage of the respondents’ age, 49% was between 31 and 35 years, 56% has a working experience of 6-10 years, 61% were married, 69% had secondary education as their educational level. However, findings show that socio-economic characteristics (x2 =15.504, df=6, p < 0.05) and income (r=0.83, p < 0.05) have a significant relationship on the fishing. It was established that the Women in Fish production/processing were faced with a lot of constraints such as high cost of inputs, inadequate electricity supply, lack of adequate capital, non-availability of the improved oven, non-availability of extension agents, inadequate fish landing, lack of transportation facilities, lack of training on financial management and loan acquisition which affected the level of output of women in Fish processing adversely.

Keywords: women, fishing, agriculture, Lagos

Procedia PDF Downloads 117

Authors: Mengjiao Hu

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Nowadays, China's consumption pattern is entering the "experience era"; people's consumption behavior is no longer simply "buy, buy, buy" but the transition from "consumption in space" to "consumption of space". The street is a basic public product and an important public space in the city, and commerce along the street is an important space for people to consume in the "experience era". Therefore, in this way, it is particularly important to create the vitality of the gray space along the street. From the perspective of vitality construction, this paper takes Sha Zheng Street in Chongqing as the empirical object, combined with the theoretical knowledge of behavioral architecture, and based on the current situation of the commercial gray space along Sha Zheng Street, this paper explores the influence factors and the constraints behind the spatial vitality and then puts forward a general strategy to improve the spatial vitality of the commercial gray space along the street. The author hopes that through the exploration of the vitality of commercial gray space along the street, environmental design can be introduced into the integrated design vision of the urban public environment, and the urban designers can be inspired to create a street environment with a living atmosphere with a small start.

Keywords: vitality creation, gray space, street commerce, sha zheng street

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Authors: Olakunle Felix Adekunle

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In the recent years several non-tariff provisions have been regarded as means holding back transboundary environmental damages. Affected countries have then increasingly come up with trade policies to compensate for or to In recent years, several non‐tariff trade provisions have been regarded as means of holding back transboundary environmental damages. Affected countries have then increasingly come up with trade policies to compensate for or to enforce the adoption of environmental policies elsewhere. These non‐tariff trade constraints are claimed to threaten the freedom of trading across nations, as well as the harmonization sought towards the distribution of income and policy measures. Therefore the ‘greening’ of world trade issues essentially ranges over whether there ought or ought not to be a trade‐off between trade and environmental policies. The impacts of free trade and environmental policies on major economic variables (such as trade flows, balances of trade, resource allocation, output, consumption and welfare) are thus studied here, and so is the EKC hypothesis, when such variables are played against the resulting emission levels. The policy response is seen as a political game, played here by two representative parties named North and South. Whether their policy choices, simulated by four scenarios, are right or wrong depends on their policy goals, split into economic and environmental ones.

Keywords: environmental, policies, strategies, constraint

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Authors: M. Bartal

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A large empirical evidence points to sizable lifetime earnings losses associated with the displacement of tenured workers. The causes of these losses are still not well-understood. Existing explanations are heavily based on human capital depreciation during non-employment spells. In this paper, a new avenue is explored. Evidence on the role of household liquidity constraints in accounting for the persistence of post-displacement earning losses is provided based on SIPP data. Then, a directed search and matching model with endogenous human capital and wealth accumulation is introduced. The model is computationally tractable thanks to its block-recursive structure and highlights a non-trivial, yet intuitive, interaction between wealth and human capital. Constrained workers tend to accept jobs with low firm-sponsored training because the latter are (endogenously) easier to find. This new channel provides a plausible explanation for why young (highly constrained) workers suffer persistent scars after displacement. Finally, the model is calibrated on US data to show that the interplay between wealth and human capital is crucial to replicate the observed lifecycle pattern of earning losses. JEL— E21, E24, J24, J63.

Keywords: directed search, human capital accumulation, job displacement, wealth accumulation

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Authors: Charles Simplice Mbatsogo Mebo

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With growth picking up again, Africa seems increasingly attractive for its own nationals who return home through new opportunities available for them. The purpose of our research paper is to understand the role of the international partners in Cameroon, with regards to their support for the return and reintegration of migrants. We, therefore, questioned the relevance and effectiveness and efficacy of international instruments in reintegrating returnees to Cameroon. After our analysis that was conducted on the basis of a documentary exploration, interviews, and field surveys, it appears that the contribution of the international partners in Cameroon is proven in relation to their participation in the financing and placement of returned experts. However, their contribution remains insufficient due to their low level of deployment and the insignificant impact of their investments on the reintegration of Cameroonian Diasporas. The research also reveals some exogenous and endogenous constraints that hinder international institutions' actions in terms of accompanying migrants returning to Cameroon. Finally, for a better management of the returnees' issue, it is necessary to set up a mechanism to raise awareness and a coordination system of all international actors involved. It is also relevant to reform the migration policy, build institutional capacities, and improve the juridical-administrative and economic environment so as to favor co-development in Cameroon.

Keywords: international partners, returnees, diaspora, migration policy, co-development

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Authors: Fu Lin

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We consider the worst-case load-shedding problem in electric power networks where a number of transmission lines are to be taken out of service. The objective is to identify a prespecified number of line outages that lead to the maximum interruption of power generation and load at the transmission level, subject to the active power-flow model, the load and generation capacity of the buses, and the phase-angle limit across the transmission lines. For this nonlinear model with binary constraints, we show that all decision variables are separable except for the nonlinear power-flow equations. We develop an iterative decomposition algorithm, which converts the worst-case load shedding problem into a sequence of small subproblems. We show that the subproblems are either convex problems that can be solved efficiently or nonconvex problems that have closed-form solutions. Consequently, our approach is scalable for large networks. Furthermore, we prove the convergence of our algorithm to a critical point, and the objective value is guaranteed to decrease throughout the iterations. Numerical experiments with IEEE test cases demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed approach.

Keywords: load shedding, power system, proximal alternating linearization method, vulnerability analysis

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Authors: Mujahid S. Alturais

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The construction of process plants in oil and gas-producing countries, such as Saudi Arabia, necessitates substantial investment in design and building. Each new plant, while unique, includes common building types, suggesting an opportunity for design standardization. This study investigates the adoption of standardized Issue For Construction (IFC) packages for non-process buildings in Saudi Aramco. A SWOT analysis presents the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of this approach. The approach's benefits are illustrated using the Hawiyah Unayzah Gas Reservoir Storage Program (HUGRSP) as a case study. Standardization not only offers significant cost savings and operational efficiencies but also expedites project timelines, reduces the potential for change orders, and fosters local economic growth by allocating building tasks to local contractors. Standardization also improves project management by easing interface constraints between different contractors and promoting adaptability to future industry changes. This research underscores the standardization of non-process buildings as a powerful strategy for cost optimization, efficiency enhancement, and local economic development in process plant construction within the oil and gas sector.

Keywords: building, construction, management, project, standardization

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Authors: Mohammad Y. Badiee, Saeed Golestani, Mir Saman Pishvaee

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In recent years consumers and governments have been pushing companies to design their activities in such a way as to reduce negative environmental impacts by producing renewable product or threat free disposal policy more and more. It is therefore important to focus more accurate to the optimization of various aspect of total supply chain. Modeling a supply chain can be a challenging process due to the fact that there are a large number of factors that need to be considered in the model. The use of multi-objective optimization can lead to overcome those problems since more information is used when designing the model. Uncertainty is inevitable in real world. Considering uncertainty on parameters in addition to use multi-objectives are ways to give more flexibility to the decision making process since the process can take into account much more constraints and requirements. In this paper we demonstrate a stochastic scenario based robust model to cope with uncertainty in a closed-loop multi-objective supply chain. By applying the proposed model in a real world case, the power of proposed model in handling data uncertainty is shown.

Keywords: supply chain management, closed-loop supply chain, multi-objective optimization, goal programming, uncertainty, robust optimization

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Authors: Luo Jin China, Jin Fang

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Countryside has been generally recognized and regarded as a characteristic symbol which presents in human memory for a long time. As a result of the change of times, because of it’s failure to meet the growing needs of the growing life and mental decline, the vast rural area began to decline. But their history feature image which accumulated by the ancient tradition provides people with the origins of existence on the spiritual level, such as "identity" and "belonging", makes people closer to the others in the spiritual and psychological aspects of a common experience about the past, thus the sense of a lack of culture caused by the losing of memory symbols is weakened. So, in the modernization process, how to repair its vitality and transform and planning it in a sustainable way has become a hot topics in architectural and urban planning. This paper aims to break the constraints of disciplines, from the perspective of interdiscipline, using the research methods of systems science to analyze and discuss the theories and methods of rural form factors, which based on the viewpoint of memory in psychology. So, we can find a right way to transform the Rural to give full play to the role of the countryside in the actual use and the shape of history spirits.

Keywords: rural, sustainable renovation, restoration, psychology, memory

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Authors: Omer Oral, Y. Emre Yilmaz

Abstract:

Topology optimization is an approach that optimizes material distribution within a given design space for a certain load and boundary conditions by providing performance goals. It uses various restrictions such as boundary conditions, set of loads, and constraints to maximize the performance of the system. It is different than size and shape optimization methods, but it reserves some features of both methods. In this study, interior structures of the parts were optimized by using SIMP (Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization) method. The volume of the part was preassigned parameter and minimum deflection was the objective function. The basic idea behind the theory was considered, and different methods were discussed. Rhinoceros 3D design tool was used with Grasshopper and TopOpt plugins to create and optimize parts. A Grasshopper algorithm was designed and tested for different beams, set of arbitrary located forces and support types such as pinned, fixed, etc. Finally, 2.5D shapes were obtained and verified by observing the changes in density function.

Keywords: Grasshopper, lattice structure, microstructures, Rhinoceros, solid isotropic material with penalization method, TopOpt, topology optimization

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