Search results for: large privately owned enterprises

Authors: Melissa C. Ingram

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This literature review sought to explore the dimensions of diversity that can affect classroom learning. This review is significant as it can aid educators in reaching more of their diverse student population and creating supportive classrooms for teachers and students. For this study, peer-reviewed articles were found and compiled using Google Scholar. Key terms used in the search include student individuality, classroom equality, student development, teacher development, and teacher individuality. Relevant educational standards such as Common Core and Partnership for the 21st Century were also included as part of this review. Student and teacher individuality and equality is discussed as well as methods to grow both within educational settings. Embracing student and teacher individuality was found to be key as it may affect how each person interacts with given information. One method to grow individuality and equality in educational settings included drafting and employing revised teaching standards which include various Common Core and U.S. State standards. Another was to use educational theories such as constructivism, cognitive learning, and Experiential Learning Theory. However, barriers to growing individuality, such as not acknowledging differences in a population’s dimensions of diversity, still exist. Studies found preserving the dimensions of diversity owned by both teachers and students yielded more positive and beneficial classroom experiences.

Keywords: classroom equality, student development, student individuality, teacher development, teacher individuality

Procedia PDF Downloads 187

Authors: Yinwei Lin, Cha'o-Kuang Chen

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In this article, the Laplace Adomian transform method (LADM) and double decomposition method (DDM) are used to solve the annular hyperbolic profile fins with variable thermal conductivity. As the thermal conductivity parameter ε is relatively large, the numerical solution using DDM become incorrect. Moreover, when the terms of DDM are more than seven, the numerical solution using DDM is very complicated. However, the present method can be easily calculated as terms are over seven and has more precisely numerical solutions. As the thermal conductivity parameter ε is relatively large, LADM also has better accuracy than DDM.

Keywords: fins, thermal conductivity, Laplace transform, Adomian, nonlinear

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Authors: Joseph Lillington, Tom Gout, Mike Harrison, Ian Farnan

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The vitrification of high-level nuclear waste within borosilicate glass and its incorporation within a multi-barrier repository deep underground is widely accepted as the preferred disposal method. However, for this to happen, any safety case will require validation that the initially localized radionuclides will not be considerably released into the near/far-field. Therefore, accurate mechanistic models are necessary to predict glass dissolution, and these should be robust to a variety of incorporated waste species and leaching test conditions, particularly given substantial variations across international waste-streams. Here, machine learning is used to predict glass material properties (viscosity, density) and glass leaching model parameters from large-scale industrial data. A variety of different machine learning algorithms have been compared to assess performance. Density was predicted solely from composition, whereas viscosity additionally considered temperature. To predict suitable glass leaching model parameters, a large simulated dataset was created by coupling MATLAB and the chemical reactive-transport code HYTEC, considering the state-of-the-art GRAAL model (glass reactivity in allowance of the alteration layer). The trained models were then subsequently applied to the large-scale industrial, experimental data to identify potentially appropriate model parameters. Results indicate that ensemble methods can accurately predict viscosity as a function of temperature and composition across all three industrial datasets. Glass density prediction shows reliable learning performance with predictions primarily being within the experimental uncertainty of the test data. Furthermore, machine learning can predict glass dissolution model parameters behavior, demonstrating potential value in GRAAL model development and in assessing suitable model parameters for large-scale industrial glass dissolution data.

Keywords: machine learning, predictive modelling, pattern recognition, radioactive waste glass

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Authors: Shinn-Dar Wu

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This study aims to synthesize lithium iron phosphate cathode material using a recycling technology involving non-protective gas calcination. The advantages include lower cost and easier production than traditional methods that require a large amount of protective gas. The novel technology may have extensive industrial applications. Given that the traditional gas calcination has a large number of protection free Fe3+ production, this study developed a precursor iron phosphate (Fe2+) material recycling technology and conducted related tests and analyses. It focused on flow field design of calcination and new technology as well as analyzed the best conditions for powder calcination combination. The electrical properties were determined by button batteries and exhibited a capacity of 118 mAh/g (The use of new materials synthesis, capacitance is about 122 mAh/g). The cost reduced to 50% of the original.

Keywords: lithium battery, lithium iron phosphate, calcined technology, recycling technology

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Authors: Loai Abdallah, Malik Yousef

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A domain space for the data should reflect the actual similarity between objects. Since objects belonging to the same cluster usually share some common traits even though their geometric distance might be relatively large. In general, the Euclidean distance of data points that represented by large number of features is not capturing the actual relation between those points. In this study, we propose a new method to construct a different space that is based on clustering to form a new distance metric. The new distance space is based on ensemble clustering (EC). The EC distance space is defined by tracking the membership of the points over multiple runs of clustering algorithm metric. Over this distance, we train the decision trees classifier (DT-EC). The results obtained by applying DT-EC on 10 datasets confirm our hypotheses that embedding the EC space as a distance metric would improve the performance.

Keywords: ensemble clustering, decision trees, classification, K nearest neighbors

Procedia PDF Downloads 190

Authors: Azlin Mohd Azmi, Tongming Zhou, Akira Rinoshika, Liang Cheng

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The turbulent structures in the wake (x/d =10 to 60) of a screen cylinder have been reduced to understand the roles of the various structures as evolving downstream by comparing with those obtained in a solid circular cylinder wake at Reynolds number, Re of 7000. Using a wavelet multi-resolution technique, the flow structures are decomposed into a number of wavelet components based on their central frequencies. It is observed that in the solid cylinder wake, large-scale structures (of frequency f0 and 1.2 f0) make the largest contribution to the Reynolds stresses although they start to lose their roles significantly at x/d > 20. In the screen cylinder wake, the intermediate-scale structures (2f0 and 4f0) contribute the most to the Reynolds stresses at x/d =10 before being taken over by the large-scale structures (f0) further downstream.

Keywords: turbulent structure, screen cylinder, vortex, wavelet multi-resolution analysis

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Authors: Y. Fekir, K. Mederbal, M. A. Hammadouche, D. Anteur

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The cultural park of the Ahaggar, occupying a large area of Algeria, is characterized by a rich wetlands area to be preserved and managed both in time and space. The management of a large area, by its complexity, needs large amounts of data, which for the most part, are spatially localized (DEM, satellite images and socio-economic information...), where the use of conventional and traditional methods is quite difficult. The remote sensing, by its efficiency in environmental applications, became an indispensable solution for this kind of studies. Remote sensing imaging data have been very useful in the last decade in very interesting applications. They can aid in several domains such as the detection and identification of diverse wetland surface targets, topographical details, and geological features... In this work, we try to extract automatically wetlands area using multispectral remotely sensed data on-board the Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) and Landsat satellite. Both are high-resolution multispectral imager with a 30 m resolution. The instrument images an interesting surface area. We have used images acquired over the several area of interesting in the National Park of Ahaggar in the south of Algeria. An Extraction Algorithm is applied on the several spectral index obtained from combination of different spectral bands to extract wetlands fraction occupation of land use. The obtained results show an accuracy to distinguish wetlands area from the other lad use themes using a fine exploitation on spectral index.

Keywords: multispectral data, EO1, landsat, wetlands, Ahaggar, Algeria

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Authors: Khaing Yadana Swe, Lillie Dewan

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At present, the cascade PID control is widely used to control the super-heating temperature (main steam temperature). As the main steam temperature has the characteristics of large inertia, large time-delay, and time varying, etc., conventional PID control strategy can not achieve good control performance. In order to overcome the bad performance and deficiencies of main steam temperature control system, Model Free Adaptive Control (MFAC) P cascade control system is proposed in this paper. By substituting MFAC in PID of the main control loop of the main steam temperature control, it can overcome time delays, non-linearity, disturbance and time variation.

Keywords: model-free adaptive control, cascade control, adaptive control, PID

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Authors: Federica Marangio

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This study looks at the triangle of knowledge: research-education-innovation as growth engine of an inclusive and sustainable society, where the research is the strategic process which allows the acquisition of knowledge, innovation appraises the knowledge acquired and the education is the enabling factor of the human capital to create entrepreneurial capital. Where does Italy and China stand in the global geography of innovation? Europe is calling on a smart, inclusive and sustainable growth through a specializing process that looks at the social and economic challenges, able to understand the characteristics of specific geographic areas. It is easily questionable why it is not as simple as it looks to come up with entrepreneurial ideas in all the geographic areas. Seen that the technology plus the human capital should be the means through which is possible to innovate and contribute to the boost of innovation culture, then the young educated people can be seen as the society changing agents and it becomes clear the importance of investigating the skills and competencies that lead to innovation. By starting innovation-based activities, other countries on an international level, are able now to be part of an healthy innovative ecosystem which is the result of a strong growth policy which enables innovation. Analyzing the geography of the innovation on a global scale, comes to light that the innovative entrepreneurship is the process which portrays the competitiveness of the regions in the knowledge-based economy as strategic process able to match intellectual capital and market opportunities. The level of innovative entrepreneurship is not only the result of the endogenous growth ability of the enterprises, but also by significant relations with other enterprises, universities, other centers of education and institutions. To obtain more innovative entrepreneurship is necessary to stimulate more synergy between all these territory actors in order to create, access and value existing and new knowledge ready to be disseminate. This study focuses on individual’s lived experience and the researcher believed that she can’t understand the human actions without understanding the meaning that they attribute to their thoughts, feelings, beliefs and so given she needed to understand the deeper perspectives captured through face-to face interaction. A case study approach will contribute to the betterment of knowledge in this field. This case study will represent a picture of the innovative ecosystem and the entrepreneurial mindset as a key ingredient of endogenous growth and a must for sustainable local and regional development and social cohesion. The case study will be realized analyzing two Chinese companies. A structured set of questions will be asked in order to gain details on what generated success or failure in the different situations with the past and at the moment of the research. Everything will be recorded not to lose important information during the transcription phase. While this work is not geared toward testing a priori hypotheses, it is nevertheless useful to examine whether the projects undertaken by the companies, were stimulated by enabling factors that, as result, enhanced or hampered the local innovation culture.

Keywords: Entrepreneurship, education, geography of innovation, education.

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Authors: R. Alias, A. Kasa, M. R. Taha

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The effect of particle size on shear strength of granular materials are investigated using direct shear tests. Small direct shear test (60 mm by 60 mm by 24 mm deep) were conducted for particles passing the sieves with opening size of 2.36 mm. Meanwhile, particles passing the standard 20 mm sieves were tested using large direct shear test (300 mm by 300 mm by 200 mm deep). The large direct shear tests and the small direct shear tests carried out using the same shearing rate of 0.09 mm/min and similar normal stresses of 100, 200, and 300 kPa. The results show that the peak and residual shear strength decreases as particle size increases.

Keywords: particle size, shear strength, granular material, direct shear test

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Authors: L. Pigon, S. Kot, J. K. Grabara

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Nowadays, with organizations facing the challenges of increasing competitiveness, human capital accumulated by the organization is one of the elements that strongly differentiate between companies. Efficient management in the competition area requires to manage the competencies of their employees to be suitable to the market fluctuations. The aim of the paper was to determine how employee training to improve their competencies is verified. The survey was conducted among 37 respondents involved in selection of training providers and training programs in their enterprises. The results showed that all organizations use training survey as a basic method for evaluation of training effectiveness. Depending on the training contents and organization, the questionnaires contain various questions. Most of these surveys are composed of the three basic blocks: the trainer's assessment, the evaluation of the training contents, the assessment of the materials and the place of the organisation. None of the organization surveys conducted regular job-related observations or examined the attitudes of the training participants.

Keywords: human capital, competencies, training effectiveness, sale department

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Authors: Arnab Roy, P. S. Anil Kumar

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Hall bar magnetic field sensors based on planar hall effect were fabricated from permalloy (Ni¬80Fe20) thin films grown by pulsed laser ablation. As large as 400% planar Hall voltage change was observed for a magnetic field sweep within ±4 Oe, a value comparable with present day TMR sensors at room temperature. A very large planar Hall sensitivity of 1200 Ω/T was measured close to switching fields, which was not obtained so far apart from 2DEG Hall sensors. In summary, a highly sensitive low magnetic field sensor has been constructed which has the added advantage of simple architecture, good signal to noise ratio and robustness.

Keywords: planar hall effect, permalloy, NiFe, pulsed laser ablation, low magnetic field sensor, high sensitivity magnetic field sensor

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Authors: Yuri Teterin, Lomali Generdukaev, Dmitry Blagovestnov, Peter Yartcev

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Introduction: Under the definition "large biliary stones," we referred to stones over 1.5 cm, in which standard transpapillary litho extraction techniques were unsuccessful. Electrohydraulic and laser contact lithotripsy under SpyGlass control have been actively applied for the last decade in order to improve endoscopic treatment results. Aims and Methods: Between January 2019 and July 2022, the N.V. Sklifosovsky Research Institute of Emergency Care treated 706 patients diagnosed with choledocholithiasis who underwent biliary stones removed from the common bile duct. Of them, in 57 (8, 1%) patients, the use of a Dormia basket or Biliary stone extraction balloon was technically unsuccessful due to the size of the stones (more than 15 mm in diameter), which required their destruction. Mechanical lithotripsy was used in 35 patients, and electrohydraulic and laser lithotripsy under SpyGlass direct visualization system - in 26 patients. Results: The efficiency of mechanical lithotripsy was 72%. Complications in this group were observed in 2 patients. In both cases, on day one after lithotripsy, acute pancreatitis developed, which resolved on day three with conservative therapy (Clavin-Dindo type 2). The efficiency of contact lithotripsy was in 100% of patients. Complications were not observed in this group. Bilirubin level in this group normalized on the 3rd-4th day. Conclusion: Our study showed the efficacy and safety of electrohydraulic and laser lithotripsy under SpyGlass control in a well-defined group of patients with large bile duct stones.

Keywords: contact lithotripsy, choledocholithiasis, SpyGlass, cholangioscopy, laser, electrohydraulic system, ERCP

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Authors: P. Bauer, K. Mougin, V. Vignal, A. Buch, P. Ponthiaux, D. Faye

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Nowadays, noble metallic nanostructures with unique morphology are widely used as new sensors due to their fascinating optical, electronic and catalytic properties. Among various shapes, dendritic nanostructures have attracted much attention because of their large surface-to-volume ratio, high sensitivity and special texture with sharp tips and nanoscale junctions. Several methods have been developed to fabricate those specific structures such as electrodeposition, photochemical way, seed-mediated growth or wet chemical method. The present study deals with a novel approach for a controlled growth pattern-directed organisation of Au flower-like crystals (NFs) deposited onto stainless steel plates to achieve large-scale functional surfaces. This technique consists in the deposition of a soft nanoporous template on which Au NFs are grown by electroplating and seed-mediated method. Size, morphology, and interstructure distance have been controlled by a site selective nucleation process. Dendritic Au nanostructures have appeared as excellent Raman-active candidates due to the presence of very sharp tips of multi-branched Au nanoparticles that leads to a large local field enhancement and a good SERS sensitivity. In addition, these structures have also been used as electrochemical sensors to detect traces of molecules present in a solution. A correlation of the number of active sites on the surface and the current charge by both colorimetric method and cyclic voltammetry of gold structures have allowed a calibration of the system. This device represents a first step for the fabrication of MEMs platform that could ultimately be integrated into a lab-on-chip system. It also opens pathways to several technologically large-scale nanomaterials fabrication such as hierarchically ordered crystal architectures for sensor applications.

Keywords: dendritic, electroplating, gold, template

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Authors: Xiaochen Mu

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Data rights confirmation, as a key legal issue in the development of the digital economy, is undergoing a transition from a traditional rights paradigm to a more complex private-economic paradigm. In this process, data rights confirmation has evolved from a simple claim of rights to a complex structure encompassing multiple dimensions of personality rights and property rights. Current data rights confirmation practices are primarily reflected in two models: holistic rights confirmation and process rights confirmation. The holistic rights confirmation model continues the traditional "one object, one right" theory, while the process rights confirmation model, through contractual relationships in the data processing process, recognizes rights that are more adaptable to the needs of data circulation and value release. In the design of the data property rights system, there is a hierarchical characteristic aimed at decoupling from raw data to data applications through horizontal stratification and vertical staging. This design not only respects the ownership rights of data originators but also, based on the usufructuary rights of enterprises, constructs a corresponding rights system for different stages of data processing activities. The subjects of data property rights include both data originators, such as users, and data producers, such as enterprises, who enjoy different rights at different stages of data processing. The intellectual property rights system, with the mission of incentivizing innovation and promoting the advancement of science, culture, and the arts, provides a complete set of mechanisms for protecting innovative results. However, unlike traditional private property rights, the granting of intellectual property rights is not an end in itself; the purpose of the intellectual property system is to balance the exclusive rights of the rights holders with the prosperity and long-term development of society's public learning and the entire field of science, culture, and the arts. Therefore, the intellectual property granting mechanism provides both protection and limitations for the rights holder. This perfectly aligns with the dual attributes of data. In terms of achieving the protection of data property rights, the granting of intellectual property rights is an important institutional choice that can enhance the effectiveness of the data property exchange mechanism. Although this is not the only path, the granting of data property rights within the framework of the intellectual property rights system helps to establish fundamental legal relationships and rights confirmation mechanisms and is more compatible with the classification and grading system of data. The modernity of the intellectual property rights system allows it to adapt to the needs of big data technology development through special clauses or industry guidelines, thus promoting the comprehensive advancement of data intellectual property rights legislation. This paper analyzes data protection under the virtual property layer theory and two-fold virtual property rights system. Based on the “bundle of right” theory, this paper establishes specific three-level data rights. This paper analyzes the cases: Google v. Vidal-Hall, Halliday v Creation Consumer Finance, Douglas v Hello Limited, Campbell v MGN and Imerman v Tchenquiz. This paper concluded that recognizing property rights over personal data and protecting data under the framework of intellectual property will be beneficial to establish the tort of misuse of personal information.

Keywords: data protection, property rights, intellectual property, Big data

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Authors: Foad Vashahi, Shahnaz Rezaei, Jeekeun Lee

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Large Eddy Simulation (LES) was performed on a dual counter rotating axial swirler in a confined rectangular configuration. Grids were constructed based on a primary Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulation and then were refined based on the Kolmogorov length scale. Water as cold flow condition was applied and results were compared via Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) experimental results. The focus was to investigate the flow behavior within the region before the flare and very close to the exit of the swirler. This region contributes to a highly unsteady flow behavior and requires great attention to enhancing the flame stability in gas turbine combustor and swirl burners. The PVC formation within the central core flow is strongly related to the peaks of pressure or axial velocity spectrum and up to two distinct peaks at the swirler mouth could be observed. Here, spectra analysis in iso-thermal condition inside the swirler where the inner swirler dominates the flow, showed a higher potential of instabilities with three to four distinct peaks where moving forward to the exit of swirler the number of peaks is decreased. In addition to this, the central axis corresponds to no peaks of instabilities while further away in the radial direction, several peaks exist.

Keywords: axial counter rotating swirler, large eddy simulation (LES), precessing vortex core (PVC), power spectral density (PSD)

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Authors: Arjun Chatterjee

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The India-China border clash in Galwan valley in June 2020, the first deadly skirmish between the two Asian giants in the Himalayan border area in over four decades, highlighted the need to examine the notion of ‘authenticity’ in journalistic practices. Information emanating from such remotely located, sparsely populated, and not well-demarcated international land borders have limited sources, restricted to official sources, which have their own narrative. Geopolitical goals and ambitions embolden narratives of nationalism in the media, and these often challenge the notion and understanding of authenticity in journalism. The Indian press, contrary to the Chinese press, which is state-owned, is diverse and also confrontational, where narratives of nationalism are differentially interpreted, embedded, and realised. This paper examines how authenticity has become a variable, rather than a constant, in conflict reporting of the Sino-Indian border clash and how authenticity is interpreted similarly or differently in conflict journalism. The paper reports qualitative textual analysis of two leading English language newspapers – The Times of India and The Hindu, and two mainstream regional language newspapers, Amar Ujala (Hindi) and Ananda Bazar Patrika (Bengali), to evaluate the ways in which representations of information function in conflict reporting and to recontextualize (and thus change or modify the meaning of) that which they represent, and with what political and cultural implications.

Keywords: India-China, framing, conflict, media narratives, border dispute

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Authors: Patrick Nüß

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

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

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Authors: Gabrielle Peck, Ryan Hayes

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Current large scale fire tests focus on flammability and heat release measurements. Smoke toxicity isn’t considered despite it being a leading cause of death and injury in unwanted fires. A key reason could be that the practical difficulties associated with quantifying individual toxic components present in a fire effluent often require specialist equipment and expertise. Fire effluent contains a mixture of unreactive and reactive gases, water, organic vapours and particulate matter, which interact with each other. This interferes with the operation of the analytical instrumentation and must be removed without changing the concentration of the target analyte. To mitigate the need for expensive equipment and time-consuming analysis, a portable gas analysis system was designed, constructed and tested for use in large-scale fire tests as a simpler and more robust alternative to online FTIR measurements. The novel equipment aimed to be easily portable and able to run on battery or mains electricity; be able to be calibrated at the test site; be capable of quantifying CO, CO2, O2, HCN, HBr, HCl, NOx and SO2 accurately and reliably; be capable of independent data logging; be capable of automated switchover of 7 bubblers; be able to withstand fire effluents; be simple to operate; allow individual bubbler times to be pre-set; be capable of being controlled remotely. To test the analysers functionality, it was used alongside the ISO/TS 19700 Steady State Tube Furnace (SSTF). A series of tests were conducted to assess the validity of the box analyser measurements and the data logging abilities of the apparatus. PMMA and PA 6.6 were used to assess the validity of the box analyser measurements. The data obtained from the bench-scale assessments showed excellent agreement. Following this, the portable analyser was used to monitor gas concentrations during large-scale testing using the ISO 9705 room corner test. The analyser was set up, calibrated and set to record smoke toxicity measurements in the doorway of the test room. The analyser was successful in operating without manual interference and successfully recorded data for 12 of the 12 tests conducted in the ISO room tests. At the end of each test, the analyser created a data file (formatted as .csv) containing the measured gas concentrations throughout the test, which do not require specialist knowledge to interpret. This validated the portable analyser’s ability to monitor fire effluent without operator intervention on both a bench and large-scale. The portable analyser is a validated and significantly more practical alternative to FTIR, proven to work for large-scale fire testing for quantification of smoke toxicity. The analyser is a cheaper, more accessible option to assess smoke toxicity, mitigating the need for expensive equipment and specialist operators.

Keywords: smoke toxicity, large-scale tests, iso 9705, analyser, novel equipment

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Authors: Liliana Crăc, Nicolae Giorgi, Gheorghe Fometescu, Mihai Cruceru

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Power plants represent the main source of air pollution, through combustion processes, both by releasing large amounts of dust, greenhouse gases and acidifying, and large quantities of waste, slag and ash disposed in landfills covering significant areas. SC Turceni S.A. is one of the largest power generating unit from Romania. Their policy is focused on the production and delivery of electricity in order to increase energy efficiency and to reduce the environmental impact. The paper presents environmental impact produced by slag and ash storage, while pointing out that the recovery of this waste significant improves the air quality in the area. An important aspect is the proprieties of the ash and slag evacuated by Turceni power plant in order to use them for building materials manufacturing.

Keywords: ash and slag properties, air pollution, building materials industry, power plants

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Authors: Eva Štěpánková

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Environmental management implementation is presently one of the ways of organization success and value improvement. Increasing an organization motivation to environmental measures introduction is caused primarily by the rising pressure of the society that generates various incentives to endeavor for the environmental performance improvement. The aim of the paper is to identify and characterize the key incentives and expectations leading organizations to the environmental management implementation. The author focuses on five businesses of different size and field, operating in the Czech Republic. The qualitative approach and grounded theory procedure are used in research. The results point out that the significant incentives for environmental management implementation represent primarily demands of customers, the opportunity to declare the environmental commitment and image improvement. The researched enterprises less commonly expect the economical contribution, competitive advantage increase or export rate improvement. The results show that marketing contributions are primarily expected from the environmental management implementation.

Keywords: environmental management, environmental management system, ISO 14001, Czech Republic

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Authors: Ephrem Getahun, Shengwen Qi, Songfeng Guo, Yu Zou, Melesse Alemayehu

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Residual shear characteristics of slide soil profile sections (SSPS) were examined using ring shear tests to know the relative residual shear behaviors among the sections of slide soil. The multistage-multiphase shearing techniques were employed to perform the experiment for each soil specimen continuously towards large displacements. The grain distribution analysis of SSPS samples was characterized by coarsening upward from bottom slip to the top sections; however, the slip surface was considered as a sheared zone that endorses their low shear resistance for failure. There is an average range of 1-2.5 mm axial displacement on each stage of loadings and phases of shearing that depicts the significant effect of dilation and compression of soil specimen. The middle section has the largest consolidation percentage (10-29%), and vertical displacement compared to other sections and showed high shear strengthening behavior having maximum shear stress of 189kPa at 240kPa loading compared to basal and top sections. It is found that the middle section of SSPS has relatively high shear resistance behavior for large displacement shearing. The residual shear assessment indicates that there is a significant influence of large displacement and rate on the friction coefficient behaviors; it resulted in shear weakening effect to attain their residual condition.

Keywords: comparison, displacements, residual shear stress, shear behavior, slide soils

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Authors: Dirk V. H. K. Franco

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For many of us a lot of phenomena are considered a risk. Examples are: climate change, decrease of biodiversity, amount of available, clean water and the decreasing variety of living organism in the oceans. On the other hand a lot of people perceive the following trends as catastrophic: the sea level, the melting of the pole ice, the numbers of tornado’s, floods and forest fires, the national security and the potential of 192 million climate migrants in 2060. The interest for climate, health and the possible solutions is large and common. The 5th IPCC states that the last decades especially human activities (and in second order natural emissions) have caused large, mainly negative impacts on our ecological environments. Chris Stringer stated that we represent, nowadays after evolution, the only one version of the possible humanity. At this very moment we are faced with an (over) crowded planet together with global climate changes and a strong demand for energy and material resources. Let us hope that we can counter these difficulties either with better application of existing technologies or by inventing new (applications of) clean technologies together with new business models.

Keywords: clean technologies, catastrophic, climate, possible solutions

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Authors: Jiří Klečka, Dagmar Čámská

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This paper is focused on the investigation of productivity (total productivity and partial productivity). The value productivity is an indicator of level and changes in technical economic efficiency of production factors. It represents an important factor in achieving corporate objectives. This text works with the contemporary concept of value productivity that means that indicators of the productivity express the effect of economic efficiency not only of inputs consumption, but also of inputs binding efficiency. This approach is based on principles of the economic profit, respectively the economic value added (EVA). The research is done on the sample of Czech enterprises operating in the automotive industry in the regions of Liberec and the Central Bohemia. The data sample covers the time period 2006-2011 which allows the comparison of development before crisis and during crisis period. It enables to discover the companies' reaction during crises and the regional comparison allows to showing if there are significant differences between regions.

Keywords: automotive industry, Czech Republic, economic efficiency, regional comparison, value productivity

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Authors: Hassan Wajid

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Architecture design studio with all its accouterments, especially pedagogies, has been committed to awakening the students to the true meaning of the concept of Dwelling. The real task is how to make them unlearn the associations of “dwelling as a rented or owned accommodation by the road with a car parked in front of a garage door and replace it by the fundamental experiential-phenomenological manifestations of Light, Space, Gravity and Time through assigned readings and small theoretical challenges resulting in drawings and models. The primary challenge for teachers remained the introduction of the act or desire of ‘Dwelling’ philosophically. The academic link had been offered by Albert Hofstadter's Poetry, Language, through which Martin Heidegger’s fourfold concept of ‘Building Dwelling, Thinking’ primarily served to guide us through this trajectory in helping to build an intellectual framework as justification of the term “dwelling” in its various meanings. Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space and Merleau-Ponti’s Phenomenology of Perception also got assigned as reading. Four fictional characters created by two master short story writers G Maupassant, and O Henry were introduced as DwellersClients in search of their respective dwellings as drawn imaginations in the studio four-fold of Light, Space, Gravity, and Time and at the same time aspire to understand thoroughly Heidegger’s Four-Fold of Earth, Sky, Divinities and Mortals. asserting its place in the corresponding story and its unique character as the Dweller.

Keywords: dwelling, imagination, architectural manifestation, phenomenological

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Authors: Neeraj Neeraj, Soumen Basu, Banibrata Maity

Abstract:

Glutathione (GSH) is one of the most important biomolecules having small molecular weight, which helps in various cellular functions like regulation of gene, xenobiotic metabolism, preservation of intracellular redox activities, signal transduction, etc. Therefore, the detection of GSH requires huge attention by using extremely selective and sensitive techniques. Herein, a rapid fluorometric nanosensor is designed by combining carbon dots (Cdots) and MnO₂ nanoparticles of different sizes for the detection of GSH. The bottom-up approach, i.e., microwave method, was used for the preparation of the water soluble and greatly fluorescent Cdots by using ascorbic acid as a precursor. MnO₂ nanospheres of different sizes (large, medium, and small) were prepared by varying the ratio of concentration of methionine and KMnO₄ at room temperature, which was confirmed by HRTEM analysis. The successive addition of MnO₂ nanospheres in Cdots results fluorescence quenching. From the fluorescence intensity data, Stern-Volmer quenching constant values (KS-V) were evaluated. From the fluorescence intensity and lifetime analysis, it was found that the degree of fluorescence quenching of Cdots followed the order: large > medium > small. Moreover, fluorescence recovery studies were also performed in the presence of GSH. Fluorescence restoration studies also show the order of turn on follows the same order, i.e., large > medium > small, which was also confirmed by quantum yield and lifetime studies. The limits of detection (LOD) of GSH in presence of Cdots@different sized MnO₂ nanospheres were also evaluated. It was observed thatLOD values were in μM region and lowest in case of large MnO₂ nanospheres. The separation distance (d) between Cdots and the surface of different MnO₂ nanospheres was determined. The d values increase with increase in the size of the MnO₂ nanospheres. In summary, the synthesized Cdots@MnO₂ nanocomposites acted as a rapid, simple, economical as well as environmental-friendly nanosensor for the detection of GSH.

Keywords: carbon dots, fluorescence, glutathione, MnO₂ nanospheres, turn off-on

Procedia PDF Downloads 152

Authors: Jungeun Cho

Abstract:

Social finance has received increasing attention as a means to promote the growth of regional economies. Despite the plenty of research discussed their critical role and functions in regional economic development such as the financing and promotion of co-operatives or social enterprises and the offering credit to the financially excluded in the region, however, rarely are efforts made to measure the contribution of social finance in the regional economy. It is essential to establish an evaluation model in order to encourage social finance institutions to perform their supposed role and functions on regional economic development. The objective of this paper is to formulate an evaluation model of the contribution of social finance to the regional economy through an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach. This study is expected to provide useful guidelines for social finance institutions’ strategies and the policies of local or central government regarding social finance.

Keywords: social finance, regional economy, social economy, policies of local or central government

Procedia PDF Downloads 433

Authors: Conrad Weber

Abstract:

The modelling of railway noise over large projects areas can be very time consuming in terms of preparing the noise models and calculation time. An open-source GIS program has been utilised to assist with the modelling of operational noise levels for 675km of railway corridor. A range of GIS algorithms were utilised to break up the noise model area into manageable calculation sizes. GIS was utilised to prepare and filter a range of noise modelling inputs, including building files, land uses and ground terrain. A spreadsheet was utilised to manage the accuracy of key input parameters, including train speeds, train types, curve corrections, bridge corrections and engine notch settings. GIS was utilised to present the final noise modelling results. This paper explains the noise modelling process and how the spreadsheet and GIS were utilised to accurately model this massive project efficiently.

Keywords: noise, modeling, GIS, rail

Procedia PDF Downloads 122

Authors: Yuriy A. Shevchenko, Konstantin V. Nefedev

Abstract:

We consider the antiferromagnetic systems of Ising spins located at the sites of the hexagonal, triangular and pyrochlore lattices. Such systems can be diluted to a certain concentration level by randomly replacing the magnetic spins with nonmagnetic ones. Quite recently we studied density of states (DOS) was calculated by the Wang-Landau method. Based on the obtained data, we calculated the dependence of the residual entropy (entropy at a temperature tending to zero) on the dilution concentration for quite large systems (more than 2000 spins). In the current study, we obtained the same data for small systems (less than 20 spins) by a complete search of all possible magnetic configurations and compared the result with the result for large systems. The shape of the curve remains unchanged in both cases, but the specific values of the residual entropy are different because of the finite size effect.

Keywords: entropy, pyrochlore, spin ice, Wang-Landau algorithm

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Authors: Lei Zhao, Zhe Yuan, Wenyue Kuang

Abstract:

This paper studies two-warehouse inventory models for a deteriorating item considering that the demand is influenced by inventory levels. The problem mainly focuses on the optimal order policy and the optimal order cycle with inventory-level-dependent demand in two-warehouse system for retailers. It considers the different deterioration rates and the inventory holding costs in owned warehouse (OW) and rented warehouse (RW), and the conditions of transportation cost, allowed shortage and partial backlogging. Two inventory models are formulated: last-in first-out (LIFO) model and first-in-first-out (FIFO) model based on the policy choices of LIFO and FIFO, and a comparative analysis of LIFO model and FIFO model is made. The study finds that the FIFO policy is more in line with realistic operating conditions. Especially when the inventory holding cost of OW is high, and there is no difference or big difference between deterioration rates of OW and RW, the FIFO policy has better applicability. Meanwhile, this paper considers the differences between the effects of warehouse and shelf inventory levels on demand, and then builds retailers’ inventory decision model and studies the factors of the optimal order quantity, the optimal order cycle and the average inventory cost per unit time. To minimize the average total cost, the optimal dispatching policies are provided for retailers’ decisions.

Keywords: FIFO model, inventory-level-dependent, LIFO model, two-warehouse inventory

Procedia PDF Downloads 279