Search results for: global performance

Authors: Misbah Javaid, Vladimir Estivill-Castro, Rene Hexel

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The field of robotics is advancing rapidly to the point where robots have become an integral part of the modern society. These robots collaborate and contribute productively with humans and compensate some shortcomings from human abilities and complement them with their skills. Effective teamwork of humans and robots demands to investigate the critical issue of trust. The field of human-computer interaction (HCI) has already examined trust humans place in technical systems mostly on issues like reliability and accuracy of performance. Early work in the area of expert systems suggested that automatic generation of explanations improved trust and acceptability of these systems. In this work, we augmented a robot with the user-invoked explanation generation proficiency. To measure explanations effect on human’s level of trust, we collected subjective survey measures and behavioral data in a human-robot team task into an interactive, adversarial and partial information environment. The results showed that with the explanation capability humans not only understand and recognize robot as an expert team partner. But, it was also observed that human's learning and human-robot team performance also significantly improved because of the meaningful interaction with the robot in the human-robot team. Moreover, by observing distinctive outcomes, we expect our research outcomes will also provide insights into further improvement of human-robot trustworthy relationships.

Keywords: explanation interface, adversaries, partial observability, trust building

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Authors: Fhumulani R. Ramukhwatho, Roelien du Plessis, Suzan H. H. Oelofse

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There are a growing number of scientific papers, journals and reports on household food waste, the reason being that food waste has become a significant global issue that is costing billions of Rands in resources. To reduce food waste in a sustainable manner, it requires an understanding of the generation of food waste. This paper assesses household food wastage in the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality (CTMM). A total of 210 interviewed participants using face-to-face interviews based on a structured questionnaire and the actual weighing of households’ food wasted was quantified using a weighing kitchen scale. Fifty-nine percent of respondents agreed that they wasted food, while 41% thought they did not waste food at all. Households wasted an average total of 6 kg of food waste per week per household. The study concluded that households buy and prepare more food that ends up wasted.

Keywords: assessment, developing country, food waste, household

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Authors: Danar Agus Susanto, Hermawan Febriansyah, Meilinda Ayundyahrini

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The availability of spring water to meet people demand is often a problem, especially in tropical areas with very limited surface water sources, or very deep underground water. Although the technology and equipment of pumping system are available and easy to obtain, but in remote areas, the availability of pumping system is difficult, due to the unavailability of fuel or the lack of electricity. Solar Water Pumping System (SWPS) became one of the alternatives that can overcome these obstacles. In the tropical country, sunlight can be obtained throughout the year, even in remote areas. SWPS were already widely built in Indonesia, but many encounter problems during operations, such as decreased of efficiency; pump damaged, damaged of controllers or inverters, and inappropriate photovoltaic performance. In 2011, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) issued the IEC standard 62253:2011 titled Photovoltaic pumping systems - Design qualification and performance measurements. This standard establishes design qualifications and performance measurements related to the product of a solar water pumping system. National Standardization Agency of Indonesia (BSN) as the national standardization body in Indonesia, has not set the standard related to solar water pumping system. This research to study operational procedures of SWPS by adopting of IEC Standard 62253:2011 to be Indonesia Standard (SNI). This research used literature study and field observation for installed SWPS in Indonesia. Based on the results of research on SWPS already installed in Indonesia, IEC 62253: 2011 standard can improve efficiency and reduce operational failure of SWPS. SWPS installed in Indonesia still has GAP of 51% against parameters in IEC standard 62253: 2011. The biggest factor not being met is related to operating and maintenance handbooks for personnel that included operation and repair procedures. This may result in operator ignorance in installing, operating and maintaining the system. The Photovoltaic (PV) was also the most non-compliance factor of 71%, although there are 22 Indonesia Standard (SNI) for PV (modules, installation, testing, and construction). These research samples (installers, manufacturers/distributors, and experts) agreed on the parameter in the IEC standard 62253: 2011 able to improve the quality of SWPS in Indonesia. Recommendations of this study, that is required the adoption of IEC standard 62253:2011 into SNI to support the development of SWPS for remote areas in Indonesia.

Keywords: efficiency, inappropriate installation, remote areas, solar water pumping system, standard

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Authors: Atwari Rawani, Suresh Prasad Sharma, K. D. P. Singh

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In this paper, an analytical investigation based on energy and exergy analysis of the parabolic trough collector (PTC) with alternate clockwise and counter-clockwise twisted tape inserts in the absorber tube has been presented. For fully developed flow under quasi-steady state conditions, energy equations have been developed in order to analyze the rise in fluid temperature, thermal efficiency, entropy generation and exergy efficiency. Also the effect of system and operating parameters on performance have been studied. A computer program, based on mathematical models is developed in C++ language to estimate the temperature rise of fluid for evaluation of performances under specified conditions. For numerical simulations four different twist ratio, x = 2,3,4,5 and mass flow rate 0.06 kg/s to 0.16 kg/s which cover the Reynolds number range of 3000 - 9000 is considered. This study shows that twisted tape inserts when used shows great promise for enhancing the performance of PTC. Results show that for x=1, Nusselt number/heat transfer coefficient is found to be 3.528 and 3.008 times over plain absorber of PTC at mass flow rate of 0.06 kg/s and 0.16 kg/s respectively; while corresponding enhancement in thermal efficiency is 12.57% and 5.065% respectively. Also the exergy efficiency has been found to be 10.61% and 10.97% and enhancement factor is 1.135 and 1.048 for same set of conditions.

Keywords: exergy efficiency, twisted tape ratio, turbulent flow, useful heat gain

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Authors: Georgios Charizanos, Haydar Demirhan, Duygu Icen

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Two of the most impactful issues in classical logistic regression are class imbalance and complete separation. These can result in model predictions heavily leaning towards the imbalanced class on the binary response variable or over-fitting issues. Fuzzy methodology offers key solutions for handling these problems. However, most studies propose the transformation of the binary responses into a continuous format limited within [0,1]. This is called the possibilistic approach within fuzzy logistic regression. Following this approach is more aligned with straightforward regression since a logit-link function is not utilized, and fuzzy probabilities are not generated. In contrast, we propose a method of fuzzifying binary response variables that allows for the use of the logit-link function; hence, a probabilistic fuzzy logistic regression model with the Monte Carlo method. The fuzzy probabilities are then classified by selecting a fuzzy threshold. Different combinations of fuzzy and crisp input, output, and coefficients are explored, aiming to understand which of these perform better under different conditions of imbalance and separation. We conduct numerical experiments using both synthetic and real datasets to demonstrate the performance of the fuzzy logistic regression framework against seven crisp machine learning methods. The proposed framework shows better performance irrespective of the degree of imbalance and presence of separation in the data, while the considered machine learning methods are significantly impacted.

Keywords: fuzzy logistic regression, fuzzy, logistic, machine learning

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Authors: K. Nazan Turhan, Tuğçe Ersan

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The population of the world is approximately 8 billion, and it increases uncontrollably and irrepressibly, leading to an increase in consumption. This situation causes crucial problems, and food waste is one of these. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines food waste as the discarding or alternative utilization of food that is safe and nutritious for the consumption of humans along the entire food supply chain, from primary production to end household consumer level. In addition, according to the estimation of FAO, one-third of all food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted worldwide every year. Wasting food endangers natural resources and causes hunger. For instance, excessive amounts of food waste cause greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to global warming. Therefore, waste management has been gaining significance in the last few decades at both local and global levels due to the expected scarcity of resources for the increasing population of the world. There are several ways to recover food waste. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Food Recovery Hierarchy, food waste recovery ways are source reduction, feeding hungry people, feeding animals, industrial uses, composting, and landfill/incineration from the most preferred to the least preferred, respectively. Bioethanol, biodiesel, biogas, agricultural fertilizer and animal feed can be obtained from food waste that is generated by different food industries. In this project, feeding animals was selected as a food waste recovery method and food waste of a plant was used to provide ingredient uniformity. Grasshoppers were used as a protein source. In other words, the project was performed to develop a dog food product by recovery of the plant’s food waste after following some steps. The collected food waste and purchased grasshoppers were sterilized, dried and pulverized. Then, they were all mixed with 60 g agar-agar solution (4%w/v). 3 different aromas were added, separately to the samples to enhance flavour quality. Since there are differences in the required amounts of different species of dogs, fulfilling all nutritional needs is one of the problems. In other words, there is a wide range of nutritional needs in terms of carbohydrates, protein, fat, sodium, calcium, and so on. Furthermore, the requirements differ depending on age, gender, weight, height, and species. Therefore, the product that was developed contains average amounts of each substance so as not to cause any deficiency or surplus. On the other hand, it contains more protein than similar products in the market. The product was evaluated in terms of contamination and nutritional content. For contamination risk, detection of E. coli and Salmonella experiments were performed, and the results were negative. For the nutritional value test, protein content analysis was done. The protein contents of different samples vary between 33.68% and 26.07%. In addition, water activity analysis was performed, and the water activity (aw) values of different samples ranged between 0.2456 and 0.4145.

Keywords: food waste, dog food, animal nutrition, food waste recovery

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Authors: Kaviyarasan D., Satish Kumar S. R.

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India being vast in area and population with great scope of international business, roadways and railways network connection within the country is expected to have a big growth. There are numerous rail-cum-road bridges constructed across many major rivers in India and few are getting very old. So there is more possibility of repairing or coming up with such new bridges in India. Analysis and design of such bridges are practiced through conventional procedure and end up with heavy and uneconomical sections. Such heavy class steel bridges when subjected to high seismic shaking has more chance to fail by stability because the members are too much rigid and stocky rather than being flexible to dissipate the energy. This work is the collective study of the researches done in the truss bridge and steel concrete composite truss bridges presenting the method of analysis, tools for numerical and analytical modeling which evaluates its seismic behaviour and collapse mechanisms. To ascertain the inelastic and nonlinear behaviour of the structure, generally at research level static pushover analysis is adopted. Though the static pushover analysis is now extensively used for the framed steel and concrete buildings to study its lateral action behaviour, those findings by pushover analysis done for the buildings cannot directly be used for the bridges as such, because the bridges have completely a different performance requirement, behaviour and typology as compared to that of the buildings. Long span steel bridges are mostly the truss bridges. Truss bridges being formed by many members and connections, the failure of the system does not happen suddenly with single event or failure of one member. Failure usually initiates from one member and progresses gradually to the next member and so on when subjected to further loading. This kind of progressive collapse of the truss bridge structure is dependent on many factors, in which the live load distribution and span to length ratio are most significant. The ultimate collapse is anyhow by the buckling of the compression members only. For regular bridges, single step pushover analysis gives results closer to that of the non-linear dynamic analysis. But for a complicated bridge like heavy class steel bridge or the skewed bridges or complicated dynamic behaviour bridges, nonlinear analysis capturing the progressive yielding and collapse pattern is mandatory. With the knowledge of the postelastic behaviour of the bridge and advancements in the computational facility, the current level of analysis and design of bridges has moved to state of ascertaining the performance levels of the bridges based on the damage caused by seismic shaking. This is because the buildings performance levels deals much with the life safety and collapse prevention levels, whereas the bridges mostly deal with the extent damages and how quick it can be repaired with or without disturbing the traffic after a strong earthquake event. The paper would compile the wide spectrum of modeling to analysis of the steel concrete composite truss bridges in general.

Keywords: bridge engineering, performance based design of steel truss bridge, seismic design of composite bridge, steel-concrete composite bridge

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Authors: A. Asgharzadeh, M. Maroufi

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5G mobile communication system has drawn more and more attention. The 5G system needs to provide three different types of services, including enhanced Mobile BroadBand (eMBB), massive machine-type communication (mMTC), and ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC). Universal Filtered Multi-Carrier (UFMC), Filter Bank Multicarrier (FBMC), and Filtered Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (f-OFDM) are suggested as a well-known candidate waveform for the coming 5G system. Themachine-to-machine (M2M) communications are one of the essential applications in 5G, and it involves exchanging of concise messages with a very short latency. However, in UFMC systems, the subcarriers are grouped into subbands but f-OFDM only one subband covers the entire band. Furthermore, in FBMC, a subband includes only one subcarrier, and the number of subbands is the same as the number of subcarriers. This paper mainly discusses the performance of UFMC with different parameters for the UFMC system. Also, paper shows that UFMC is the best choice outperforming OFDM in any case and FBMC in case of very short packets while performing similarly for long sequences with channel estimation techniques for Interleave Division Multiple Access (IDMA) systems.

Keywords: universal filtered multi-carrier technique, UFMC, interleave division multiple access, IDMA, fifth-generation, subband

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Authors: M. Kharroubi, Y. Rady, F. Bellali, S. Himmi

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The global objective of this study is to upgrade the sardine oil processed in Morocco by using enzymatic solutions. The specific objective of this part of study is to optimize the various parameters involved in enzymatic deacidification of fish oil processed in Morocco: pressure, ratio of oil/novozymes 435, ratio of oil/glycerol, temperature. The best deacidification yields were obtained with: -A temperature of 70 °C; -A ratio -Oil/Glycerol: 2% (% P); -A ratio -Oil/Novozyme 435: 1% (% P); -A pressure: 15 to 25 mbar. On the other hand, the study of the effect of initial oil acidity showed that whatever the acidity of the oil studied (very acidic, or low acidic), the final yields are high. Acidity does not reduce the reaction efficiency. From an industrial point of view, this represents a competitive advantage to consider. This eco-friend enzymatic solution may allows Moroccan fish oil producers to achieve acid number values that meet the standard.

Keywords: sardine oil, enzymatic esterfication, desacidification, acid number

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Authors: Alireza Gholami, Amir H. D. Markazi

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In this paper, an observer-based direct adaptive fuzzy sliding mode (OAFSM) algorithm is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, the zero-input dynamics of the plant could be unknown. The input connection matrix is used to combine the sliding surfaces of individual subsystems, and an adaptive fuzzy algorithm is used to estimate an equivalent sliding mode control input directly. The fuzzy membership functions, which were determined by time consuming try and error processes in previous works, are adjusted by adaptive algorithms. The other advantage of the proposed controller is that the input gain matrix is not limited to be diagonal, i.e. the plant could be over/under actuated provided that controllability and observability are preserved. An observer is constructed to directly estimate the state tracking error, and the nonlinear part of the observer is constructed by an adaptive fuzzy algorithm. The main advantage of the proposed observer is that, the measured outputs is not limited to the first entry of a canonical-form state vector. The closed-loop stability of the proposed method is proved using a Lyapunov-based approach. The proposed method is applied numerically on a multi-link robot manipulator, which verifies the performance of the closed-loop control. Moreover, the performance of the proposed algorithm is compared with some conventional control algorithms.

Keywords: adaptive algorithm, fuzzy systems, membership functions, observer

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Authors: Akalu Banbeta, Emmanuel Lesaffre, Reynaldo Martina, Joost Van Rosmalen

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Including data from previous studies (historical data) in the analysis of the current study may reduce the sample size requirement and/or increase the power of analysis. The most common example is incorporating historical control data in the analysis of a current clinical trial. However, this only applies when the historical control dataare similar enough to the current control data. Recently, several Bayesian approaches for incorporating historical data have been proposed, such as the meta-analytic-predictive (MAP) prior and the modified power prior (MPP) both for single control as well as for multiple historical control arms. Here, we examine the performance of the MAP and the MPP approaches for the analysis of (over-dispersed) count data. To this end, we propose a computational method for the MPP approach for the Poisson and the negative binomial models. We conducted an extensive simulation study to assess the performance of Bayesian approaches. Additionally, we illustrate our approaches on an overactive bladder data set. For similar data across the control arms, the MPP approach outperformed the MAP approach with respect to thestatistical power. When the means across the control arms are different, the MPP yielded a slightly inflated type I error (TIE) rate, whereas the MAP did not. In contrast, when the dispersion parameters are different, the MAP gave an inflated TIE rate, whereas the MPP did not.We conclude that the MPP approach is more promising than the MAP approach for incorporating historical count data.

Keywords: count data, meta-analytic prior, negative binomial, poisson

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Authors: S. Jayasinghe, W. G. D. Wickramasingha, V. Karunaratne, D. N. Karunaratne, A. Ekanayake

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Multi-drug resistant microbial pathogens are a serious global health problem, and hence, there is an urgent necessity for discovering new drug therapeutics. However, finding alternatives is a one of the biggest challenges faced by the global drug industry due to the spiraling high cost and serious side effects associated with modern medicine. On the other hand, plants and their secondary metabolites can be considered as good sources of scaffolds to provide structurally diverse bioactive compounds as potential therapeutic agents. 6β-hydroxy betunolic acid is a triterpenoid isolated from bark of Schumacheria castaneifolia which is an endemic plant to Sri Lanka which has shown antibacterial activity against both Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 29213) and methicillin-resistant S. aureus with Minimum Inhibition Concentration (MIC) of 16 µg/ml. The objective of this study was to determine the anti-bacterial activity for the derivatives of 6β- hydroxy betunolic acid against standard strains of Staphylococcus aureus (ATCC 29213 and ATCC 25923), Enterococcus faecalis (ATCC 29212), Escherichia coli (ATCC 35218 and ATCC 25922), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (ATCC 27853), carbepenemas produce Kebsiella pneumonia (ATCC BAA 1705) and carbepenemas non produce Kebsiella pneumonia (ATCC BAA 1706) and four stains of clinically isolated methicillin resistance S. aureus and Acinetobacter. Structural analogues of 6β-hydroxy betunolic acid were synthesized by modifying the carbonyl group at C-3 to obtain olefin and oxime, the hydroxyl group at C-6 position to a ketone, the carboxylic acid at C-17 to obtain amide and halo ester and the olefin group at C-20 position to obtain epoxide. Chemical structures of the synthesized analogues were confirmed with spectroscopic data and antibacterial activity was determined through broth micro dilution assay. Results revealed that 6β- hydroxy betunolic acid shows significant antibacterial activity only against the Gram positive strains and it was inactive against all the tested Gram negative strains for the tested concentration range. However, structural modifications into oxime and olefin at C-3, ketone at C-6 and epoxide at C-20 decreased its antibacterial activity against the gram positive organisms and it was totally lost with the both modifications at C-17 into amide and ester. These results concluded that the antibacterial activity of 6β- hydroxy betunolic acid and derivatives is predominantly depending on the cell wall difference of the bacteria and the presence of carboxylic acid at C-17 is highly important for the antibacterial activity against Gram positive organisms.

Keywords: antibacterial activity, 6β- hydroxy betunolic acid, broth micro dilution assay, structure activity relationship

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Authors: Nahla H. Alaswadko, Rayya A. Hassan, Bayar N. Mohammed

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Empirical deterministic models have been developed to predict roughness progression of heavy duty spray sealed pavements for a dataset representing rural arterial roads. The dataset provides a good representation of the relevant network and covers a wide range of operating and environmental conditions. A sample with a large size of historical time series data for many pavement sections has been collected and prepared for use in multilevel regression analysis. The modelling parameters include road roughness as performance parameter and traffic loading, time, initial pavement strength, reactivity level of subgrade soil, climate condition, and condition of drainage system as predictor parameters. The purpose of this paper is to report the approaches adopted for models development and validation. The study presents multilevel models that can account for the correlation among time series data of the same section and to capture the effect of unobserved variables. Study results show that the models fit the data very well. The contribution and significance of relevant influencing factors in predicting roughness progression are presented and explained. The paper concludes that the analysis approach used for developing the models confirmed their accuracy and reliability by well-fitting to the validation data.

Keywords: roughness progression, empirical model, pavement performance, heavy duty pavement

Procedia PDF Downloads 159

Authors: M. Hadi Kusuma, Nandy Putra, Anhar Riza Antariksawan, Ficky Augusta Imawan

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Heat pipe is considered to be applied as a passive system to remove residual heat that generated from reactor core when incident occur or from spent fuel storage pool. The objectives are to characterized the heat transfer phenomena, performance of heat pipe, and as a model for large heat pipe will be applied as passive cooling system on nuclear spent fuel pool storage. In this experimental wickless heat pipe or two-phase closed thermosyphon (TPCT) is used. Variation of heat flux are 611.24 Watt/m² - 3291.29 Watt/m². Variation of filling ratio are 45 - 70%. Variation of initial pressure are -62 to -74 cm Hg. Demineralized water is used as working fluid in the TPCT. The results showed that increasing of heat load leads to an increase of evaporation of the working fluid. The optimum filling ratio obtained for 60% of TPCT evaporator volume, and initial pressure variation gave different TPCT wall temperature characteristic. TPCT showed best performance with 60% filling ratio and can be consider to be applied as passive residual heat removal system or passive cooling system on spent fuel storage pool.

Keywords: two-phase closed term syphon, heat pipe, passive cooling, spent fuel storage pool

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Authors: Ming-Chan Chung, Wen-Ming Huang, Yi-Chu Liu, Li-Hui Yang, Ming-Jyh Chen

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introduction: Hospital buildings require considerable energy, including air conditioning, lighting, elevators, heating, and medical equipment. Energy consumption in hospitals is expected to increase significantly due to innovative equipment and continuous development plans. Consequently, the environment and climate will be adversely affected. Hospitals should therefore consider transforming from their traditional role of saving lives to being at the forefront of global efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. As healthcare providers, it is our responsibility to provide a high-quality environment while using as little energy as possible. Purpose / Methods: Compare the energy-saving benefits of solar photovoltaic systems and solar hot water systems. The proportion of electricity consumption effectively reduced after the installation of solar photovoltaic systems. To comprehensively assess the potential benefits of utilizing solar energy for both photovoltaic (PV) and solar thermal applications in hospitals, a solar PV system was installed covering a total area of 28.95 square meters in 2021. Approval was obtained from the Taiwan Power Company to integrate the system into the hospital's electrical infrastructure for self-use. To measure the performance of the system, a dedicated meter was installed to track monthly power generation, which was then converted into area output using an electric energy conversion factor. This research aims to compare the energy efficiency of solar PV systems and solar thermal systems. Results: Using the conversion formula between electrical and thermal energy, we can compare the energy output of solar heating systems and solar photovoltaic systems. The comparative study draws upon data from February 2021 to February 2023, wherein the solar heating system generated an average of 2.54 kWh of energy per panel per day, while the solar photovoltaic system produced 1.17 kWh of energy per panel per day, resulting in a difference of approximately 2.17 times between the two systems. Conclusions: After conducting statistical analysis and comparisons, it was found that solar thermal heating systems offer higher energy and greater benefits than solar photovoltaic systems. Furthermore, an examination of literature data and simulations of the energy and economic benefits of solar thermal water systems and solar-assisted heat pump systems revealed that solar thermal water systems have higher energy density values, shorter recovery periods, and lower power consumption than solar-assisted heat pump systems. Through monitoring and empirical research in this study, it has been concluded that a heat pump-assisted solar thermal water system represents a relatively superior energy-saving and carbon-reducing solution for medical institutions. Not only can this system help reduce overall electricity consumption and the use of fossil fuels, but it can also provide more effective heating solutions.

Keywords: sustainable development, energy conservation, carbon reduction, renewable energy, heat pump system

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Authors: Henry Venter, Murali Thyloth, Alceu Casseb

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Historically, mental and substance use disorders were not a global health priority. Since the 1993 World Development Report, the importance of the contribution of mental health and substance abuse on the relative global burden associated with disease morbidity has been recognized with 300 million people worldwide suffering from depression alone. This led to an international effort to improve the mental health of populations around the world. Despite these efforts some countries remain at the top of the list of countries with the highest rate of mental illness. Important research questions were asked: Would there be commonalities regarding mental health between these countries; would there be common factors leading to the high prevalence of mental illness; and how prepared are these countries with mental health delivery? Findings from this research can aid organizations and institutions preparing mental health service providers to focus training and preparation to address specific needs revealed by the study. Methods: Researchers decided to compare three distinctly different countries at the top of the list of countries with the highest rate of mental illness, the USA, India and Brazil, situated on three different continents with different economies and lifestyles. Data were collected using archival research methodology, reviewing records and findings of international and national health and mental health studies to subtract and compare data and findings. Results: The findings indicated that India is the most depressed country in the world, followed by the USA (and China) with Brazil in Latin America with the greatest number of depressed individuals. By 2020 roughly 20% of India, acountry of over one billion citizens, will suffer from some form of mental illnees, yet there are less than 4,000 experts available. In the USA 164.8 million people were substance abusers and an estimate of 47.6 million adults, 18 or older, had any mental illness in 2018. That means that about one in five adults in the USA experiences some form of mental illness each year, but only 41% of those affected received mental health care or services in the past year. Brazil has the greatest number of depressed individuals, in Latin America. Adults living in Sao Paulo megacity has prevalence of mental disorders at greater levels than similar surveys conducted in other areas of the world with more than one million adults with serious impairment levels. Discussion: The results show that, despite the vast socioeconomic differences between the three countries, there are correlations regarding mental health prevalence and difficulty to provide adequate services including a lack of awareness of how serious mental illness is, stigma for seeking mental illness, with comorbidity a common phenomenon, and a lack of partnership between different levels of service providers, which weakens mental health service delivery. The findings also indicate that mental health training institutions have a monumental task to prepare personnel to address the future mental health needs in each of the countries compared, which will constitute the next phase of the research.

Keywords: mental health epidemiology, mental health disorder, mental health prevalence, mental health treatment

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Authors: Hai Chien Pham, Thi Phuong Anh Vo, Chansik Park

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Risks management in construction projects is important to ensure the positive feasibility of the projects in which financial risks are most concerned while construction projects always run on a credit basis. Credit risks, therefore, require unique and technical tools to be well managed. Underwriting technique in credit risks, in its most basic sense, refers to the process of evaluating the risks and the potential exposure of losses. Risks analysis and underwriting are applied as a must in banks and financial institutions who are supporters for constructions projects when required. Recently, construction organizations, especially contractors, have recognized the significant increasing of credit risks which caused negative impacts to project performance and profit of construction firms. Despite the successful application of underwriting in banks and financial institutions for many years, there are few contractors who are applying this technique to analyze and mitigate the credit risks of their potential owners before signing contracts with them for delivering their performed services. Thus, contractors have taken credit risks during project implementation which might be not materialized due to the bankruptcy and/or protracted default made by their owners. With this regard, this study proposes a model using the underwriting technique for contractors to analyze and assess credit risks of their owners before making final decisions for the potential construction contracts. Contractor’s underwriters are able to analyze and evaluate the subjects such as owner, country, sector, payment terms, financial figures and their related concerns of the credit limit requests in details based on reliable information sources, and then input into the proposed model to have the Overall Assessment Score (OAS). The OAS is as a benchmark for the decision makers to grant the proper limits for the project. The proposed underwriting model is validated by 30 subjects in Asia Pacific region within 5 years to achieve their OAS, and then compare output OAS with their own practical performance in order to evaluate the potential of underwriting model for analyzing and assessing credit risks. The results revealed that the underwriting would be a powerful method to assist contractors in making precise decisions. The contribution of this research is to allow the contractors firstly to develop their own credit risk management model for proactively preventing the credit risks of construction projects and continuously improve and enhance the performance of this function during project implementation.

Keywords: underwriting technique, credit risk, risk management, construction project

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Authors: Jelena Zivkovic, Haidar Mohammed, Elaf Saeed

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Student affairs services play a critical role in contributing to the wholistic development and success of students as they progress through their academic careers. The study encompasses a multifaceted examination of student affairs service offerings amongst 10 private and 3 public Baghdad universities. Student affairs administrators (13) were surveyed along with over 300 students to determine university-sponsored services and student satisfaction and awareness. The student affairs service research findings varied significantly between private and public institutions and those that followed a national and international curriculum. Universities need to persist to adapt to changing demographics and technological advancements to enhance students' personal and academic successes, and student affairs services are key to preparing graduates to thrive in a diverse global world.

Keywords: student affairs, student success, higher education, Iraq, universities, Baghdad

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Authors: Surapong Vongvatcharanon, Fardeela Binalee, Wandee Udomuksorn, Ekkasit Kumarnsit, Uraporn Vongvatcharanon

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Hypogonadism is characterized by a decline in sex hormone levels, especially testosterone. It has been shown to be an important contributor to the decrease in muscle mass, muscle strength and performance, a condition known as sarcopenia. Preparations from Butea superba Roxb. (red Kwao Krua) have been reported to have androgenic properties. The active compounds are proposed to be flavonoids and flavonoid glycosides. Treatment with B. superba has been shown to improve erectile dysfunction in males. Parvalbumin (PV) is a relaxing factor and identified in fast twitch fibers. Alterations of the PV levels affects skeletal muscle functions. This study aimed to investigate the effects of orhchidectomy, testosterone replacement and different doses of Butea superba Roxb. on the structure, performance, levels of parvalbumin, parvalbumin and androgen receptor immunoreactivities in the extensor digitorum longus (EDL) and gastrocnemius muscles of orchidectomized rats. Twelve-week old male Wistar rats were randomly divided into 6 groups; sham-operated (SHAM), orchidectomized (BS-0), orchidectomized group that was treated with testosterone replacement of 6 µg/kg (TP) or an orchidectomized group that was treated with various doses of an extract from Butea superba Roxb.; 5 mg/kg (BS-5), 50 mg/kg (BS-50) and 500 mg/kg (BS-500) all for 90 days. The testosterone level, epididymis, seminal vesicle, prostate gland, vas deference weight, muscle fiber size, strength and endurance in both the EDL and gastrocnemius muscle were decreased in the BS-0 group but increased in the testosterone replacement group. Treatment with the B. superba Roxb. extract replacement group improved muscle fiber size, strength and endurance, but not total testosterone levels, or the epididymis, seminal vesicle, prostate gland, vas deference weight. Furthermore, the parvalbumin level, parvalbumin and androgen receptor immunoreactivities were reduced in the BS-0 group but increased in the testosterone replacement group and the B. superba Roxb. extract groups for both the EDL and gastrocnemius muscle. This study indicated that the reduction of testosterone level led to a decrease of the androgen receptor density resulting in a decline in the muscle mass and parvalbumin levels. The decrease of parvalbumin levels affected muscle performance. Testosterone replacement increased the androgen receptor density and led to an increase of muscle mass and parvalbumin levels. The increase in the parvalbumin levels may result in an improvement of muscle performance. This may explain one mechanism of testosterone on muscle mass and strength in the testosterone dependent sarcopenia. The B. superba Roxb. extract groups also had improved muscle mass, strength and endurance, parvalbumin level, parvalbumin and androgen immunoreactivities compared to the BS-O group . Butea superba Roxb. Extracts contains a flavonoid (3, 7, 3'-Trihydroxy-4'-methoxyflavone), flavonoiglycoside (3, 3'-dihydroxy-4'-methoxyflavone-7-O-β-D-glucopyranoside) and isoflavanolignans (butesuperins A and butesuperins B) all known to inhibit the cAMP phosphodiesterase enzyme. Therefore, cAMP signaling may have adaptive effects on skeletal muscle by increasing muscle mass, strength and endurance.

Keywords: Butea superba, parvalbumin, skeletal muscle, orchidectomy

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Authors: George Kassar, Phillip A. Cartwright

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Based on data collected from The Jones Learning Center (JLC), University of the Ozarks, Arkansas, U.S., this study explores the impact of inclusive classroom practices on neuro-diverse college students’ and their consequent academic performance having participated in integrative therapies designed to support students who are intellectually capable of obtaining a college degree, but who require support for learning challenges owing to disabilities, AD/HD, or ASD. The purpose of this study is two-fold. The first objective is to explore the general process, special techniques, and practices of the (JLC) inclusive program. The second objective is to identify and analyze the effectiveness of the processes, techniques, and practices in supporting the academic performance of enrolled college students with learning disabilities following integration into mainstream university learning. Integrity, transparency, and confidentiality are vital in the research. All questions were shared in advance and confirmed by the concerned management at the JLC. While administering the questionnaire as well as conducted the interviews, the purpose of the study, its scope, aims, and objectives were clearly explained to all participants prior starting the questionnaire / interview. Confidentiality of all participants assured and guaranteed by using encrypted identification of individuals, thus limiting access to data to only the researcher, and storing data in a secure location. Respondents were also informed that their participation in this research is voluntary, and they may withdraw from it at any time prior to submission if they wish. Ethical consent was obtained from the participants before proceeding with videorecording of the interviews. This research uses a mixed methods approach. The research design involves collecting, analyzing, and “mixing” quantitative and qualitative methods and data to enable a research inquiry. The research process is organized based on a five-pillar approach. The first three pillars are focused on testing the first hypothesis (H1) directed toward determining the extent to the academic performance of JLC students did improve after involvement with comprehensive JLC special program. The other two pillars relate to the second hypothesis (H2), which is directed toward determining the extent to which collective and applied knowledge at JLC is distinctive from typical practices in the field. The data collected for research were obtained from three sources: 1) a set of secondary data in the form of Grade Point Average (GPA) received from the registrar, 2) a set of primary data collected throughout structured questionnaire administered to students and alumni at JLC, and 3) another set of primary data collected throughout interviews conducted with staff and educators at JLC. The significance of this study is two folds. First, it validates the effectiveness of the special program at JLC for college-level students who learn differently. Second, it identifies the distinctiveness of the mix of techniques, methods, and practices, including the special individualized and personalized one-on-one approach at JLC.

Keywords: education, neuro-diverse students, program effectiveness, Jones learning center

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Authors: Paolo Russu

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The purpose of the present paper is to highlight some features of an economic growth model with environmental negative externalities, giving rise to a three-dimensional dynamic system. In particular, we show that the economy, which is based on a Perfect-Substitution Technologies function of production, has no neither indeterminacy nor poverty trap. This implies that equilibrium select by economy depends on the history (initial values of state variable) of the economy rather than on expectations of economies agents. Moreover, by contrast, we prove that the basin of attraction of locally equilibrium points may be very large, as they can extend up to the boundary of the system phase space. The infinite-horizon optimal control problem has the purpose of maximizing the representative agent’s instantaneous utility function depending on leisure and consumption.

Keywords: Hopf bifurcation, open-access natural resources, optimal control, perfect-substitution technologies, Poincarè compactification

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Authors: Venkat Kamavaram, Ravi Pare

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Modern warfighters experience extreme environmental conditions in many of their operational and training activities. In temperatures exceeding 95°F, the body’s temperature regulation can no longer cool through convection and radiation. In this case, the only cooling mechanism is evaporation. However, evaporative cooling is often compromised by excessive humidity. Natural cooling mechanisms can be further compromised by clothing and protective gear, which trap hot air and moisture close to the body. Creating an efficient heat extraction apparel system that is also lightweight without hindering dexterity or mobility of personnel working in extreme temperatures is a difficult technical challenge and one that needs to be addressed to increase the probability for the future success of the US military. To address this challenge, Oceanit Laboratories, Inc. has developed and patented a Liquid Cooled Garment (LCG) more effective than any on the market today. Oceanit’s LCG is a form-fitting garment with a network of thermally conductive tubes that extracts body heat and can be worn under all authorized and chemical/biological protective clothing. Oceanit specifically designed and developed ThermoCore®, a thermally conductive polymer, for use in this apparel, optimizing the product for thermal conductivity, mechanical properties, manufacturability, and performance temperatures. Thermal Manikin tests were conducted in accordance with the ASTM test method, ASTM F2371, Standard Test Method for Measuring the Heat Removal Rate of Personal Cooling Systems Using a Sweating Heated Manikin, in an environmental chamber using a 20-zone sweating thermal manikin. Manikin test results have shown that Oceanit’s LCG provides significantly higher heat extraction under the same environmental conditions than the currently fielded Environmental Control Vest (ECV) while at the same time reducing the weight. Oceanit’s LCG vests performed nearly 30% better in extracting body heat while weighing 15% less than the ECV. There are NO cooling garments in the market that provide the same thermal extraction performance, form-factor, and reduced weight as Oceanit’s LCG. The two cooling garments that are commercially available and most commonly used are the Environmental Control Vest (ECV) and the Microclimate Cooling Garment (MCG).

Keywords: thermally conductive composite, tubing, garment design, form fitting vest, thermocore

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Authors: Hassan Nabipour Afrouzi, Naser Mahmoudnia

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Broiler production has increased rapidly in tropical and subtropical regions in the past and sustained growth is forecast for the future. One of the greatest challenges to efficient production in these regions is reduced performance from warm and hot weather conditions. There are many ways to decrease these detrimental effects of heat on broiler chickens. One way is to supplement broiler diet with betaine added to feed or drinking water. A review of the results of this study suggest that betaine supplement was effective to significantly improve body weight and feed conversion ratio at the initial stages of growth but not in the finisher stages (P<0/05). It was also demonstrated that the use of betaine significantly reduced the percentage of abdominal meat and the percentage of breast meat (P<0/05), but had no effect on other carcass compositions. Betaine may improve the digestibility of specific nutrients. Betaine, as a methyl donor provides labile methyl groups for the synthesis of several metabolically active substances such as creatine and carnitine. Oil in a broiler diet is known to promote a response to dietary betaine supplements, that is, chicks have a higher demand for betaine with a high fat diet. This study implies that betaine supplement may stimulate protection of intestinal epithelium against osmotic disturbance, improve digestion and absorption conditions of the gastrointestinal tract and promote amended use of nutrients.

Keywords: heat stress, betaine, performance, broiler‚ growth

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Authors: Reza Mollapourasl, Majid Haghi

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In this study, we develop local meshfree methods known as radial basis function-generated finite difference (RBF-FD) method and Hermite finite difference (RBF-HFD) method to design stencil weights and spatial discretization for Helmholtz equation. The convergence and stability of schemes are investigated numerically in three dimensions with irregular shaped domain. These localized meshless methods incorporate the advantages of the RBF method, finite difference and Hermite finite difference methods to handle the ill-conditioning issue that often destroys the convergence rate of global RBF methods. Moreover, numerical illustrations show that the proposed localized RBF type methods are efficient and applicable for problems with complex geometries. The convergence and accuracy of both schemes are compared by solving a test problem.

Keywords: radial basis functions, Hermite finite difference, Helmholtz equation, stability

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Authors: Sahil Imtiyaz

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One of the biggest challenges has emerged from the ever-expanding, dynamic, and instantaneously changing space-Big Data; and to find a data point and inherit wisdom to this space is a hard task. In this paper, we reduce the space of big data in Hamiltonian formalism that is in concordance with Ising Model. For this formulation, we simulate the system using dye laser in FORTRAN and analyse the dynamics of the data point in energy well of rhodium atom. After mapping the photon intensity and pulse width with energy and potential we concluded that as we increase the energy there is also increase in probability of tunnelling up to some point and then it starts decreasing and then shows a randomizing behaviour. It is due to decoherence with the environment and hence there is a loss of ‘quantumness’. This interprets the efficiency parameter and the extent of quantum evolution. The results are strongly encouraging in favour of the use of ‘Topological Property’ as a source of information instead of the qubit.

Keywords: big data, optimization, quantum evolution, hamiltonian, dye laser, fermionic computations

Procedia PDF Downloads 182

Authors: Alena Radina

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On the global stage, national image is shaped by historical memory of wars and alliances, government ideology and particularly media stereotypes which represent countries in positive or negative ways. News magazine covers are a key site for national representation. The object of analysis in this paper is the portrayals of the US, Germany, China, and Russia in the front pages and cover stories of “Time”, “Der Spiegel”, “Beijing Review”, and “Expert”. Political comedy helps people learn about current affairs even if politics is not their area of interest, and thus satire indirectly sets the public agenda. Coupled with satirical messages, cover images and the linguistic messages embedded in the covers become persuasive visual and verbal factors, known to drive about 80% of magazine sales. Preliminary analysis identified satirical elements in magazine covers, which are known to influence and frame understandings and attract younger audiences. Multimodal and transnational comparative framing analyses lay the groundwork to investigate why journalists, editors and designers deploy certain frames rather than others. This research investigates to what degree frames used in covers correlate with frames within the cover stories and what these framings can tell us about media professionals’ representations of their own and other nations. The study sample includes 32 covers consisting of two covers representing each of the four chosen countries from the four magazines. The sampling framework considers two time periods to compare countries’ representation with two different presidents, and between men and women when present. The countries selected for analysis represent each category of the international news flows model: the core nations are the US and Germany; China is a semi-peripheral country; and Russia is peripheral. Examining textual and visual design elements on the covers and images in the cover stories reveals not only what editors believe visually attracts the reader’s attention to the magazine but also how the magazines frame and construct national images and national leaders. The cover is the most powerful editorial and design page in a magazine because images incorporate less intrusive framing tools. Thus, covers require less cognitive effort of audiences who may therefore be more likely to accept the visual frame without question. Analysis of design and linguistic elements in magazine covers helps to understand how media outlets shape their audience’s perceptions and how magazines frame global issues. While previous multimodal research of covers has focused mostly on lifestyle magazines or newspapers, this paper examines the power of current affairs magazines’ covers to shape audience perception of national image.

Keywords: framing analysis, magazine covers, multimodality, national image, satire

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Authors: Ezekiel Olukayode Akintunde

Abstract:

There is a high level of inadequate methods at all levels of food supply in the global food industry. The inadequacies have led to vast wastages of food. Hence there is a need to curb the wastages that can later affect natural resources, water resources, and energy to avoid negative impacts on the climate and the environment. There is a need to engage multifaceted engineering packaging approaches for a sustainable food chain to ensure active packaging, intelligent packaging, new packaging materials, and a sustainable packaging system. Packaging can be regarded as an indispensable component approach that can be applied to solve major problems of sustainable food consumption globally; this is about controlling the environmental impact of packed food. The creative innovation will ensure that packaged foods are free from food-borne diseases and food chemical pollution. This paper evaluates the key shortcomings that must be addressed by innovative food packaging to ensure a safe, natural environment that will preserve energy and sustain water resources. Certain solutions, including fabricating microbial biodegradable chemical compounds/polymers from agro-food waste remnants, appear a bright path to ensure a strong and innovative waste-based food packaging system. Over the years, depletion in the petroleum reserves has brought about the emergence of biodegradable polymers as a proper replacement for traditional plastics; moreover, the increase in the production of traditional plastics has raised serious concerns about environmental threats. Biodegradable polymers have proven to be biocompatible, which can also be processed for other useful applications. Therefore, this study will showcase a workable guiding framework for designing a sustainable food packaging system that will not constitute a danger to our present society and that will surely preserve natural water resources. Various assessment methods will be deployed at different stages of the packaging design to enhance the package's sustainability. Every decision that will be made must be facilitated with methods that will be engaged per stage to allow for corrective measures throughout the cycle of the design process. Basic performance appraisal of packaging innovations. Food wastage can result in inimical environmental impacts, and ethical practices must be carried out for food loss at home. An examination in West Africa quantified preventable food wastage over the entire food value chain at almost 180kg per person per year. That is preventable food wastage, 35% of which originated at the household level. Many food losses reported, which happened at the harvesting, storage, transportation, and processing stages, are not preventable and are without much environmental impact because such wastage can be used for feeding. Other surveys have shown that 15%-20% of household food losses can be traced to food packaging. Therefore, new innovative packaging systems can lessen the environmental effect of food wastage to extend shelf‐life to lower food loss in the process distribution chain and at the household level.

Keywords: food packaging, biodegradable polymer, intelligent packaging, shelf-life

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Authors: Shaymaa Kennedy, Sam Clark, Paul Shaply

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With the upcoming construction of high-speed rail HS2 in the UK, a number of issues surrounding the construction technology and track design need to be answered. In this paper performance of subsoil subjected to dynamic loads were studied. The material of study is Mudrock backfill, a weak prevalent rock which response under indicative loading of high-speed rail line is unknown. This paper aims to investigate the use of different track types and the influence they will have on the underlying soil, in order to evaluate the behaviour of it. Ballstless track is a well-established concept in Europe, and the investigation the benefit of the form of construction due to its known savings in maintenance costs. Physical test using a triaxial cyclic loading machine was conducted to assess the expected mechanical behaviour of mudrock under a range of dynamic loads which could be generated beneath different track constructions. Some further parameters are required to frame the problem including determining the stress change with depth and cyclic response are vital to determine the residual plastic strain which is a major concern. In addition, Stress level is discussed in this paper, which are applied to recreate conditions of soil in the laboratory. Results indicate that stress levels are highly influential on the performance of soil at shallower depth and become insignificant with increasing depth.

Keywords: stress level, dynamic load, residual plastic strain, high speed railway

Procedia PDF Downloads 238

Authors: Wei Liu, Shuquan Wang, Yang Gao

Abstract:

Microgravity Science Experiment Rack (MSER) will be onboard TianHe (TH) spacecraft planned to be launched in 2018. TH is one module of Chinese Space Station. Microgravity Vibration Isolation System (MVIS), which is MSER’s core part, is used to isolate disturbance from TH and provide high-level microgravity for science experiment payload. MVIS is two stage vibration isolation system, consisting of Follow Unit (FU) and Experiment Support Unit (ESU). FU is linked to MSER by umbilical cables, and ESU suspends within FU and without physical connection. The FU’s position and attitude relative to TH is measured by binocular vision measuring system, and the acceleration and angular velocity is measured by accelerometers and gyroscopes. Air-jet thrusters are used to generate force and moment to control FU’s motion. Measurement module on ESU contains a set of Position-Sense-Detectors (PSD) sensing the ESU’s position and attitude relative to FU, accelerometers and gyroscopes sensing ESU’s acceleration and angular velocity. Electro-magnetic actuators are used to control ESU’s motion. Firstly, the linearized equations of FU’s motion relative to TH and ESU’s motion relative to FU are derived, laying the foundation for control system design and simulation analysis. Subsequently, two control schemes are proposed. One control scheme is that ESU tracks FU and FU tracks TH, shorten as E-F-T. The other one is that FU tracks ESU and ESU tracks TH, shorten as F-E-T. In addition, motion spaces are constrained within ±15 mm、±2° between FU and ESU, and within ±300 mm between FU and TH or between ESU and TH. A Proportional-Integrate-Differentiate (PID) controller is designed to control FU’s position and attitude. ESU’s controller includes an acceleration feedback loop and a relative position feedback loop. A Proportional-Integrate (PI) controller is designed in the acceleration feedback loop to reduce the ESU’s acceleration level, and a PID controller in the relative position feedback loop is used to avoid collision. Finally, simulations of E-F-T and F-E-T are performed considering variety uncertainties, disturbances and motion space constrains. The simulation results of E-T-H showed that control performance was from 0 to -20 dB for vibration frequency from 0.01 to 0.1 Hz, and vibration was attenuated 40 dB per ten octave above 0.1Hz. The simulation results of T-E-H showed that vibration was attenuated 20 dB per ten octave at the beginning of 0.01Hz.

Keywords: microgravity science experiment rack, microgravity vibration isolation system, PID control, vibration isolation performance

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Authors: Yiorgos Hadjichristou

Abstract:

The paper will focus on the hybrid living typologies which are brought about due to the Global Crisis. Mixing of the generations and the groups of people, mingling the functions of living with working and socializing, merging the act of living in synergy with the urban realm and its constituent elements will be the springboard of proposing an essential sustainable housing approach and the respective urban development. The thematic will be based on methodologies developed both on the academic, educational environment including participation of students’ research and on the practical aspect of architecture including case studies executed by the author in the island of Cyprus. Both paths of the research will deal with the explorative understanding of the hybrid ways of living, testing the limits of its autonomy. The evolution of the living typologies into substantial hybrid entities, will deal with the understanding of new ways of living which include among others: re-introduction of natural phenomena, accommodation of the activity of work and services in the living realm, interchange of public and private, injections of communal events into the individual living territories. The issues and the binary questions raised by what is natural and artificial, what is private and what public, what is ephemeral and what permanent and all the in-between conditions are eloquently traced in the everyday life in the island. Additionally, given the situation of Cyprus with the eminent scar of the dividing ‘Green line’ and the waiting of the ‘ghost city’ of Famagusta to be resurrected, the conventional way of understanding the limits and the definitions of the properties is irreversibly shaken. The situation is further aggravated by the unprecedented phenomenon of the crisis on the island. All these observations set the premises of reexamining the urban development and the respective sustainable housing in a synergy where their characteristics start exchanging positions, merge into each other, contemporarily emerge and vanish, changing from permanent to ephemeral. This fluidity of conditions will attempt to render a future of the built- and unbuilt realm where the main focusing point will be redirected to the human and the social. Weather and social ritual scenographies together with ‘spontaneous urban landscapes’ of ‘momentary relationships’ will suggest a recipe for emerging urban environments and sustainable living. Thus, the paper will aim at opening a discourse on the future of the sustainable living merged in a sustainable urban development in relation to the imminent solution of the division of island, where the issue of property became the main obstacle to be overcome. At the same time, it will attempt to link this approach to the global need for a sustainable evolution of the urban and living realms.

Keywords: social ritual scenographies, spontaneous urban landscapes, substantial hybrid entities, re-introduction of natural phenomena

Procedia PDF Downloads 253