Search results for: weak form efficiency

Authors: Šárka Hradilová, Aleš Panáček, Radek Zbořil

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Nanotechnologies are considered the most promising fields with high added value, brings new possibilities in various sectors from industry to medicine. With the growing of interest in nanomaterials and their applications, increasing nanoparticle production leads to increased exposure of people and environment with ‘human made’ nanoparticles. Nanoparticles (NPs) are clusters of atoms in the size range of 1–100 nm. Metal nanoparticles represent one of the most important and frequently used types of NPs due to their unique physical, chemical and biological properties, which significantly differ from those of bulk material. Biological properties including toxicity of metal nanoparticles are generally determined by their size, size distribution, shape, surface area, surface charge, surface chemistry, stability in the environment and ability to release metal ions. Therefore, the biological behavior of NPs and their possible adverse effect cannot be derived from the bulk form of material because nanoparticles show unique properties and interactions with biological systems just due to their nanodimensions. Silver and gold NPs are intensively studied and used. Both can be used for instance in surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy, a considerable number of applications of silver NPs is associated with antibacterial effects, while gold NPs are associated with cancer treatment and bio imaging. Antibacterial effects of silver ions are known for centuries. Silver ions and silver-based compounds are highly toxic to microorganisms. Toxic properties of silver NPs are intensively studied, but the mechanism of cytoxicity is not fully understood. While silver NPs are considered toxic, gold NPs are referred to as toxic but also innocuous for eukaryotic cells. Therefore, gold NPs are used in various biological applications without a risk of cell damaging, even when we want to suppress the growth of cancer cells. Thus, gold NPs are toxic or harmless. Because most studies comparing particles of various sizes prepared in various ways, and testing is performed on different cell lines, it is very difficult to generalize. The novelty and significance of our research is focused to the complex biological effects of silver and gold NPs prepared by the same method, have the same parameters and the same stabilizer. That is why we can compare the biological effects of pure nanometals themselves based on their chemical nature without the influence of other variable. Aim of our study therefore is to compare the cytotoxic effect of two types of noble metal NPs focusing on the mechanisms that contribute to cytotoxicity. The study was conducted on murine fibroblasts by selected common used tests. Each of these tests monitors the selected area related to toxicity and together provides a comprehensive view on the issue of interactions of nanoparticles and living cells.

Keywords: cytotoxicity, gold nanoparticles, mechanism of cytotoxicity, silver nanoparticles

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Authors: Ryan Chalk, G. M. Shafiullah

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Climate change is a pertinent issue facing governments and societies around the world. The industrial revolution has resulted in a steady increase in the average global temperature. The mining and energy production industries have been significant contributors to this change prompting government to intervene by promoting low emission technology within these sectors. This paper initially reviews the energy problem in Australia and the mining sector with a focus on the energy requirements and production methods utilised in Western Australia (WA). Renewable energy in the form of utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV) provides a solution to these problems by providing emission-free energy which can be used to supplement the existing natural gas turbines in operation at the proposed site. This research presents a custom renewable solution for the mining site considering the specific township network, local weather conditions, and seasonal load profiles. A summary of the required PV output is presented to supply slightly over 50% of the towns power requirements during the peak (summer) period, resulting in close to full coverage in the trench (winter) period. Dig Silent Power Factory Software has been used to simulate the characteristics of the existing infrastructure and produces results of integrating PV. Large scale PV penetration in the network introduce technical challenges, that includes; voltage deviation, increased harmonic distortion, increased available fault current and power factor. Results also show that cloud cover has a dramatic and unpredictable effect on the output of a PV system. The preliminary analyses conclude that mitigation strategies are needed to overcome voltage deviations, unacceptable levels of harmonics, excessive fault current and low power factor. Mitigation strategies are proposed to control these issues predominantly through the use of high quality, made for purpose inverters. Results show that use of inverters with harmonic filtering reduces the level of harmonic injections to an acceptable level according to Australian standards. Furthermore, the configuration of inverters to supply active and reactive power assist in mitigating low power factor problems. Use of FACTS devices; SVC and STATCOM also reduces the harmonics and improve the power factor of the network, and finally, energy storage helps to smooth the power supply.

Keywords: climate change, mitigation strategies, photovoltaic (PV), power quality

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Authors: M. Duk, L. Grabowski, P. Magryta

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Today's very important element relating to air transport is the environment impact issues. Nowadays there are no emissions standards for turbine and piston engines used in air transport. However, it should be noticed that the environmental effect in the form of exhaust gases from aircraft engines should be as small as possible. For this purpose, R&D centers often use special software to simulate and to estimate the negative effect of engine working process. For cooperation between the Lublin University of Technology and the Polish aviation company WSK "PZL-KALISZ" S.A., to achieve more effective operation of the ASz62IR engine, one of such tools have been used. The AVL Boost software allows to perform 1D simulations of combustion process of piston engines. ASz62IR is a nine-cylinder aircraft engine in a radial configuration. In order to analyze the impact of its working process on the environment, the mathematical model in the AVL Boost software have been made. This model contains, among others, model of the operation cycle of the cylinders. This model was based on a volume change in combustion chamber according to the reciprocating movement of a piston. The simplifications that all of the pistons move identically was assumed. The changes in cylinder volume during an operating cycle were specified. Those changes were important to determine the energy balance of a cylinder in an internal combustion engine which is fundamental for a model of the operating cycle. The calculations for cylinder thermodynamic state were based on the first law of thermodynamics. The change in the mass in the cylinder was calculated from the sum of inflowing and outflowing masses including: cylinder internal energy, heat from the fuel, heat losses, mass in cylinder, cylinder pressure and volume, blowdown enthalpy, evaporation heat etc. The model assumed that the amount of heat released in combustion process was calculated from the pace of combustion, using Vibe model. For gas exchange, it was also important to consider heat transfer in inlet and outlet channels because of much higher values there than for flow in a straight pipe. This results from high values of heat exchange coefficients and temperature coefficients near valves and valve seats. A Zapf modified model of heat exchange was used. To use the model with the flight scenarios, the impact of flight altitude on engine performance has been analyze. It was assumed that the pressure and temperature at the inlet and outlet correspond to the values resulting from the model for International Standard Atmosphere (ISA). Comparing this model of operation cycle with the others submodels of the ASz62IR engine, it could be noticed, that a full analysis of the performance of the engine, according to the ISA conditions, can be made. This work has been financed by the Polish National Centre for Research and Development, INNOLOT, under

Keywords: aviation propulsion, AVL Boost, engine model, operation cycle, aircraft engine

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Authors: Abdulsamad Qadir Hussien

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The development of new technology in recent years has offered ordinary people various online digital platform tools and internet access to provide news stories, information, and subjects of public interest in the Kurdistan Region Government-Iraq (KRI). This shifting aspect has offered more chances for ordinary people to engage with other individuals on many issues in order to discuss and argue matters relating to their everyday lives. The key purpose of this research project will examine the role of citizen journalism in the increase of public awareness in the Kurdish community in the KRi; particularly, citizen journalism provides a new opportunity for ordinary people to raise their voices about problems and public matters in the KRI. The sample of this research project encompasses ordinary people who use social media platforms as sources of information and news concerning the KRI government policy. In the research project, the focus is on the ordinary people who are interacting with the blogs, posts, and footage that are produced by citizen journalism. The questionnaire was sent to more than 1,000 participants in the Kurdish community; this aspect produces statistically acceptable numbers to obtain a significant result for this research project. The sampling process is mainly based on the survey method in this study. The online questionnaire form includes many sections, which are divided into four key sections. The first section contains socio-demographic questions, including gender, age, and level of education. The research project applied the survey method in order to gather data and information surrounding the role of citizen journalism in increasing awareness of individuals in the Kurdish community. For this purpose, the researcher designed a questionnaire as the primary tool for the data collection process from ordinary people who use social media as a source of news and information. During the research project, online questionnaires were mailed in two ways – via Facebook and email – to participants in the Kurdish community, and this questionnaire looked for answers to questions from ordinary people, such as to what extent citizen journalism helps users to obtain information and news about public affairs and government policy. The research project found that citizen journalism has an essential role in increasing awareness of the Kurdish community, especially mainstream journalism has helped ordinary people to raise their voices in the KRI. Furthermore, citizen journalism carries more advantages as digital sources of news, footage, and information related to public affairs. This study provides useful tools to fore the news stories that are unreachable to professional journalists in the KRI.

Keywords: citizen journalism, public awareness, demonstration and democracy, social media news

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Authors: Mridula Devi

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Trafficking of women is a slur on human dignity and a shameful act to human civilization and development. Trafficking of women is one of worst brazen abuses which violate the women’s human rights. In India, more particularly in Assam, human trafficking and infringement of human rights of individual includes mainly the women and girl child of the State. Trafficking in North East region of India, more particularly in Assam occurs in two different ways – one is the internal trafficking of women and girl child from conflict affected rural areas of Assam for domestic work and prostitution. Secondly, there is trafficking of women to other south-East Asiatic countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Bangkok, Myanmar (Burma) for various purposes such as drug trafficking, labor, bar girl and prostitution.Historically, trafficking in human beings is associated with slavery and bonded or forced labor. Since the period of Roman Civilization, there was the practice of traffic in persons in the form of slave trade among the nations. With the rise of new imperialism, slavery had become an integral part of the colonial system of European Countries. With time, it almost became synonymous with prostitution or commercial sexual exploitation. Finally, the United Nation adopted the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Prostitution of others, 1949 by the G.A.Res.No.-317(iv). The Convention totally denounces the traffic in persons for the purpose of prostitution. However, it is important to note that, now a days trafficking is not confined to commercial sexual exploitation of women and children alone. It has myriad forms and the number of victims has been steadily on the rise over the past few decades. In Assam, it takes place through and for marriage, sexual exploitation, begging, organ trading, militancy conflicts, drug padding and smuggling, labour, adoption, entertainment, and sports. In this paper, empirical methodology has been used. The study is based on primary and secondary sources. Data’s are collected from different books, publications, newspaper, journals etc. For empirical analysis, some random samples are collected and systematized for better result. India suffers from the ignominy of being one of the biggest hubs of women trafficking in the world. Over the years, Assam: the north east part of India has been bearing the brunt of the rapidly rising evil of trafficking of women which threaten the life, dignity and human rights of women. Though different laws are adopted at international and national level to restore trafficking, still the menace of trafficking of women in Assam is not decreased, rather it increased. This causes a serious violation of women’s human right in Assam. Human trafficking or women’s trafficking is a serious crime against society. To curb this in Assam it is required to take some effective and dedicated measure at state level as well as national and international level.

Keywords: Assam, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, India

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Authors: Rikke Lybæk

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This paper delves into the intricacies of recycling household plastic waste within Denmark, employing an exploratory case study methodology to shed light on the technical, strategic, and market dynamics of the plastic recycling value chain. Focusing on circular economy principles, the research identifies critical gaps and opportunities in recycling processes, particularly regarding plastic packaging waste derived from households, with a notable absence in food packaging reuse initiatives. The study uncovers the predominant practice of downcycling in the current value chain, underscoring a disconnect between the potential for high-quality plastic recycling and the market's readiness to embrace such materials. Through detailed examination of three leading companies in Denmark's plastic industry, the paper highlights the existing support for recycling initiatives, yet points to the necessity of assured quality in sorted plastics to foster broader adoption. The analysis further explores the importance of reuse strategies to complement recycling efforts, aiming to alleviate the pressure on virgin feedstock. The paper ventures into future perspectives, discussing different approaches such as biological degradation methods, watermark technology for plastic traceability, and the potential for bio-based and PtX plastics. These avenues promise not only to enhance recycling efficiency but also to contribute to a more sustainable circular economy by reducing reliance on virgin materials. Despite the challenges outlined, the research demonstrates a burgeoning market for recycled plastics within Denmark, propelled by both environmental considerations and customer demand. However, the study also calls for a more harmonized and effective waste collection and sorting system to elevate the quality and quantity of recyclable plastics. By casting a spotlight on successful case studies and potential technological advancements, the paper advocates for a multifaceted approach to plastic waste management, encompassing not only recycling but also innovative reuse and reduction strategies to foster a more sustainable future. In conclusion, this study underscores the urgent need for innovative, coordinated efforts in the recycling and management of plastic waste to move towards a more sustainable and circular economy in Denmark. It calls for the adoption of comprehensive strategies that include improving recycling technologies, enhancing waste collection systems, and fostering a market environment that values recycled materials, thereby contributing significantly to environmental sustainability goals.

Keywords: case study, circular economy, Denmark, plastic waste, sustainability, waste management

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Authors: Christoph Opperer

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Space syntax is a theory and method for analyzing the spatial layout of buildings and urban environments to understand how they can influence patterns of human movement, social interaction, and behavior. While direct visibility is a key factor in space syntax research, important visual information such as light, color, texture, etc., are typically not considered, even though psychological studies have shown a strong correlation to the human perceptual experience within physical space – with light and color, for example, playing a crucial role in shaping the perception of spaciousness. Furthermore, these surface properties are often the visual features that are most salient and responsible for drawing attention to certain elements within the environment. This paper explores the potential of integrating these factors into general space syntax methods and visibility-based analysis of space, particularly for architectural spatial layouts. To this end, we use a combination of geometric (isovist) and topological (visibility graph) approaches together with image-based methods, allowing a comprehensive exploration of the relationship between spatial geometry, visual aesthetics, and human experience. Custom-coded ray-tracing techniques are employed to generate spherical panorama images, encoding three-dimensional spatial data in the form of two-dimensional images. These images are then processed through computer vision algorithms to generate saliency-maps, which serve as a visual representation of areas most likely to attract human attention based on their visual properties. The maps are subsequently used to weight the vertices of isovists and the visibility graph, placing greater emphasis on areas with high saliency. Compared to traditional methods, our weighted visibility analysis introduces an additional layer of information density by assigning different weights or importance levels to various aspects within the field of view. This extends general space syntax measures to provide a more nuanced understanding of visibility patterns that better reflect the dynamics of human attention and perception. Furthermore, by drawing parallels to traditional isovist and VGA analysis, our weighted approach emphasizes a crucial distinction, which has been pointed out by Ervin and Steinitz: the difference between what is possible to see and what is likely to be seen. Therefore, this paper emphasizes the importance of including surface properties in visibility-based analysis to gain deeper insights into how people interact with their surroundings and to establish a stronger connection with human attention and perception.

Keywords: space syntax, visibility analysis, isovist, visibility graph, visual features, human perception, saliency detection, raytracing, spherical images

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Authors: Hind Alshoubaki

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The world is now confronting a widespread urban phenomenon: refugee camps, which have mostly been established in ‘rushing mode,’ pointing toward affording temporary settlements for refugees that provide them with minimum levels of safety, security and protection from harsh weather conditions within a very short time period. In fact, those emergency settlements are transforming into permanent ones since time is a decisive factor in terms of construction and camps’ age. These play an essential role in transforming their temporary character into a permanent one that generates deep modifications to the city’s territorial structure, shaping a new identity and creating a contentious change in the city’s form and history. To achieve a better understanding for the transformation of refugee camps, this study is based on a mixed-methods approach: the qualitative approach explores different refugee camps and analyzes their transformation process in terms of population density and the changes to the city’s territorial structure and urban features. The quantitative approach employs a statistical regression analysis as a reliable prediction of refugees’ satisfaction within the Zaatari camp in order to predict its future transformation. Obviously, refugees’ perceptions of their current conditions will affect their satisfaction, which plays an essential role in transforming emergency settlements into permanent cities over time. The test basically discusses five main themes: the access and readiness of schools, the dispersion of clinics and shopping centers; the camp infrastructure, the construction materials, and the street networks. The statistical analysis showed that Syrian refugees were not satisfied with their current conditions inside the Zaatari refugee camp and that they had started implementing changes according to their needs, desires, and aspirations because they are conscious about the fact of their prolonged stay in this settlement. Also, the case study analyses showed that neglecting the fact that construction takes time leads settlements being created with below-minimum standards that are deteriorating and creating ‘slums,’ which lead to increased crime rates, suicide, drug use and diseases and deeply affect cities’ urban tissues. For this reason, recognizing the ‘temporary-eternal’ character of those settlements is the fundamental concept to consider refugee camps from the beginning as definite permanent cities. This is the key factor to minimize the trauma of displacement on both refugees and the hosting countries. Since providing emergency settlements within a short time period does not mean using temporary materials, having a provisional character or creating ‘makeshift cities.’

Keywords: refugee, refugee camp, temporary, Zaatari

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Authors: Momita Das, Sofia Banu, Jibon Kotoky

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Environmental contamination of natural resources with persistent organic pollutants is of great world-wide apprehension. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are among the organic pollutants, released due to various anthropogenic activities. Due to their toxic, carcinogenic and mutagenic properties, PAHs are of environmental and human concern. Presently, bioremediation has evolved as the most promising biotechnology for cleanup of such contaminants because of its economical and less cost effectiveness. In the present study, distribution of 16 USEPA priority PAHs was determined in the soil samples collected from fifteen different sites of Guwahati City, the Gateway of the North East Region of India. The total concentrations of 16 PAHs (Σ16 PAHs) ranged from 42.7-742.3 µg/g. Higher concentration of total PAHs was found more in the Industrial areas compared to all the sites (742.3 µg/g and 628 µg/g). It is noted that among all the PAHs, Naphthalene, Acenaphthylene, Anthracene, Fluoranthene, Chrysene and Benzo(a)Pyrene were the most available and contain the higher concentration of all the PAHs. Since microbial activity has been deemed the most influential and significant cause of PAH removal; further, twenty-three bacteria were isolated from the most contaminated sites using the enrichment process. These strains were acclimatized to utilize naphthalene and anthracene, each at 100 µg/g concentration as sole carbon source. Among them, one Gram-positive strain (JMG-01) was selected, and biodegradation ability and initial catabolic genes of PAHs degradation were investigated. Based on 16S rDNA analysis, the isolate was identified as Bacillus cereus strain JMG-01. Topographic images obtained using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) at scheduled time intervals of 7, 14 and 21 days, determined the variation in cell morphology during the period of degradation. AFM and SEM micrograph of biomass showed high filamentous growth leading to aggregation of cells in the form of biofilm with reference to the incubation period. The percentage degradation analysis using gas chromatography and mass analyses (GC-MS) suggested that more than 95% of the PAHs degraded when the concentration was at 500 µg/g. Naphthalene, naphthalene-2-methy, benzaldehyde-4-propyl, 1, 2, benzene di-carboxylic acid and benzene acetic acid were the major metabolites produced after degradation. Moreover, PCR experiments with specific primers for catabolic genes, ndo B and Cat A suggested that JMG-01 possess genes for PAHs degradation. Thus, the study concludes that Bacillus cereus strain JMG-01 has efficient biodegrading ability and can trigger the clean-up of PAHs contaminated soil.

Keywords: AFM, Bacillus cereus strain JMG-01, degradation, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, SEM

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Authors: Michael Huber, Maximilian J. Poller, Jens Tochtermann, Wolfgang Korth, Andreas Jess, Jakob Albert

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Aside from the desulfurisation, the denitrogenation of fuels is of great importance to minimize the environmental impact of transport emissions. The oxidative reaction pathway of organic nitrogen in the catalytic oxidative denitrogenation could be successfully elucidated. This is the first time such a pathway could be traced in detail in non-microbial systems. It was found that the organic nitrogen is first oxidized to nitrate, which is subsequently reduced to molecular nitrogen via nitrous oxide. Hereby, the organic substrate serves as a reducing agent. The discovery of this pathway is an important milestone for the further development of fuel denitrogenation technologies. The United Nations aims to counteract global warming with Net Zero Emissions (NZE) commitments; however, it is not yet foreseeable when crude oil-based fuels will become obsolete. In 2021, more than 50 million barrels per day (mb/d) were consumed for the transport sector alone. Above all, heteroatoms such as sulfur or nitrogen produce SO₂ and NOx during combustion in the engines, which is not only harmful to the climate but also to health. Therefore, in refineries, these heteroatoms are removed by hy-drotreating to produce clean fuels. However, this catalytic reaction is inhibited by the basic, nitrogenous reactants (e.g., quinoline) as well as by NH3. The ion pair of the nitrogen atom forms strong pi-bonds to the active sites of the hydrotreating catalyst, which dimin-ishes its activity. To maximize the desulfurization and denitrogenation effectiveness in comparison to just extraction and adsorption, selective oxidation is typically combined with either extraction or selective adsorption. The selective oxidation produces more polar compounds that can be removed from the non-polar oil in a separate step. The extraction step can also be carried out in parallel to the oxidation reaction, as a result of in situ separation of the oxidation products (ECODS; extractive catalytic oxidative desulfurization). In this process, H8PV5Mo7O40 (HPA-5) is employed as a homogeneous polyoxometalate (POM) catalyst in an aqueous phase, whereas the sulfur containing fuel components are oxidized after diffusion from the organic fuel phase into the aqueous catalyst phase, to form highly polar products such as H₂SO₄ and carboxylic acids, which are thereby extracted from the organic fuel phase and accumulate in the aqueous phase. In contrast to the inhibiting properties of the basic nitrogen compounds in hydrotreating, the oxidative desulfurization improves with simultaneous denitrification in this system (ECODN; extractive catalytic oxidative denitrogenation). The reaction pathway of ECODS has already been well studied. In contrast, the oxidation of nitrogen compounds in ECODN is not yet well understood and requires more detailed investigations.

Keywords: oxidative reaction pathway, denitrogenation of fuels, molecular catalysis, polyoxometalate

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Authors: William C. Alexander

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The oscillating water column (OSC) wave energy converter (WEC) with deep water reactance (DWR) consists of a large hollow sphere filled with seawater at the base, referred to as the ‘stabilizer’, a hollow cylinder at the top of the device, with a said cylinder having a bottom open to the sea and a sealed top save for an orifice which leads to an air turbine, and a long, narrow rod connecting said stabilizer with said cylinder. A small amount of ballast at the bottom of the stabilizer and a small amount of floatation in the cylinder keeps the device upright in the sea. The floatation is set such that the mean water level is nominally halfway up the cylinder. The entire device is loosely moored to the seabed to keep it from drifting away. In the presence of ocean waves, seawater will move up and down within the cylinder, producing the ‘oscillating water column’. This gives rise to air pressure within the cylinder alternating between positive and negative gauge pressure, which in turn causes air to alternately leave and enter the cylinder through said top-cover situated orifice. An air turbine situated within or immediately adjacent to said orifice converts the oscillating airflow into electric power for transport to shore or elsewhere by electric power cable. Said oscillating air pressure produces large up and down forces on the cylinder. Said large forces are opposed through the rod to the large mass of water retained within the stabilizer, which is located deep enough to be mostly free of any wave influence and which provides the deepwater reactance. The cylinder and stabilizer form a spring-mass system which has a vertical (heave) resonant frequency. The diameter of the cylinder largely determines the power rating of the device, while the size (and water mass within) of the stabilizer determines said resonant frequency. Said frequency is chosen to be on the lower end of the wave frequency spectrum to maximize the average power output of the device over a large span of time (such as a year). The upper portion of the device (the cylinder) moves laterally (surge) with the waves. This motion is accommodated with minimal loading on the said rod by having the stabilizer shaped like a sphere, allowing the entire device to rotate about the center of the stabilizer without rotating the seawater within the stabilizer. A full-scale device of this type may have the following dimensions. The cylinder may be 16 meters in diameter and 30 meters high, the stabilizer 25 meters in diameter, and the rod 55 meters long. Simulations predict that this will produce 1,400 kW in waves of 3.5-meter height and 12 second period, with a relatively flat power curve between 5 and 16 second wave periods, as will be suitable for an open-ocean location. This is nominally 10 times higher power than similar-sized WEC spar buoys as reported in the literature, and the device is projected to have only 5% of the mass per unit power of other OWC converters.

Keywords: oscillating water column, wave energy converter, spar bouy, stabilizer

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Authors: Rabia Genc, Aysun Eksioglu, Emine Serap Sarican, Sibel Icke

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Today the habit of cigarette smoking is among one of the most important public health concerns because of the health problems it leads to. The most important and hazardous group to use tobacco and tobacco products is adolescents and teenagers. And one of the most effective ways to prevent them from starting to smoke is education. This research is a kind of educational intervention study which was carried out in order to evaluate the effect of peer education on the teenagers' knowledge about smoking. The research was carried out between October 15, 2013 and September 9, 2015 at Ege University Ataturk Vocational Health School. The population of the research comprised of the students that have been studying at Ege University Atatürk Vocational Health School, Midwifery Department (N=390). The peer educator group that would give training on smoking consisted of 10 people, and the peer groups that would be trained were divided into two groups via simple randomization as experimental group (n=185) and control group (n=185). Questionnaire, information evaluation form, and informed consent forms were used as date collection tools. The analysis of the data which were collected in the study was carried out on Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 15.0). It was found out that 62.5 % of the students who were in peer educator group had smoked in some period of their lives; however, none of them continued to smoke. When they were asked about their reasons to start smoking, 25% said they just wanted to try it, and 25% of them answered that it was because of their friend groups. When the pre-peer education and post-peer education point averages of peer educator group were evaluated, the results showed that there was a significant difference between the point averages (p < 0.05). When the cigarette use of experimental group and the control group were evaluated, it was clear that 18.2% of the experimental group and 24.2%of the control group still smokes. 9.1% of the experimental group and 14.8% of control group stated that they started smoking because of their friend groups. Among the students who smoke 15.9% of the ones who belongs to the experimental group and 21.9% of the ones who belong to the control group stated they are thinking of quitting smoking. It was clear that there is a significant difference between the pre-education and post-education point averages of experimental group statistically (p ≤ 0.05); however, in terms of control group, there were no significant differences between the pre-test post-test averages statistically. Between the pre-test post-test averages of experimental and control groups there were not any statistically significant differences (p > 0.05). It was found out in the study that the peer education programme is not effective on the smoking habit of Vocational Health School students. When the future studies are being planned in order to evaluate the peer education activity, it can be taken into consideration that the peer education takes a long term and the students in the educator group will be more enthusiastic and a kind of leader in their environment.

Keywords: midwifery, peer, peer education, smoking

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Authors: Sujatha Edla

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Introduction: New compounds and possible uses for the bioactive substances produced by freshwater cyanobacteria are constantly being discovered through research. Certain molecules are hazardous to the environment and human health, but others have potential applications in industry, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. These discoveries advance our knowledge of the varied functions these microbes perform in different ecosystems. Cyanobacterial silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have special qualities and possible therapeutic advantages, which make them very promising for a range of medicinal uses. Aim: In our study; the attention was focused on the analysis and characterization of bioactive compounds extracted from freshwater cyanobacteria Planktothricoides raciorskii and its comparative study on Cyanobacteria-mediated silver nanoparticles synthesized by cell-free extract of Planktothricoides raciorskii. Material and Methods: A variety of bioactive secondary metabolites have been extracted, purified, and identified from cyanobacterial species using column chromatography, FTIR, and GC-MS/MS chromatography techniques and evaluated for antibacterial and cytotoxic studies, where the Cyanobacterial silver nanoparticles (CSNPs) were characterized by UV-Vis spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis and were further tested for antibacterial and cytotoxic efficiency. Results: The synthesis of CSNPs was confirmed through visible color change and shift of peaks at 430–445 nm by UV-Vis spectroscopy. The size of CSNPs was between 22 and 34 nm and oval-shaped which were confirmed by SEM and TEM analyses. The FTIR spectra showed a new peak at the range of 3,400–3,460 cm−1 compared to the control, confirming the reduction of silver nitrate. The antibacterial activity of both crude bioactive compound extract and CSNPs showed remarkable activity with Zone of inhibition against E. coli with 9.5mm and 10.2mm, 13mm and 14.5mm against S. paratyphi, 9.2mm and 9.8mm zone of inhibition against K. pneumonia by both crude extract and CSNPs, respectively. The cytotoxicity as evaluated by extracts of Planktothricoides raciorskii against MCF7-Human Breast Adenocarcinoma cell line and HepG2- Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma cell line employing MTT assay gave IC50 value of 47.18ug/ml, 110.81ug/ml against MCF7cell line and HepG2 cell line, respectively. The cytotoxic evaluation of Planktothricoides raciorskii CSNPs against the MCF7cell line was 43.37 ug/ml and 20.88 ug/ml against the HepG2 cell line. Our ongoing research in this field aims to uncover the full therapeutic potential of cyanobacterial silver nanoparticles and address any associated challenges.

Keywords: cyanobacteria, silvernanoparticles, pharmaceuticals, bioactive compounds, cytotoxic

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Authors: Mohammad Nazri Mustafa, Sh Norliza Sy Salim, Pedram Hatami Abdullah

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Civil and structural assets normally have an average of more than 30 years of design life. Adding to this advantage, the assets are normally subjected to slow degradation process. Due to the fact that repair and strengthening work for these assets are normally not dependent on plant shut down, the maintenance and integrity restoration of these assets are mostly done based on “as required” and “run to failure” basis. However unlike other industries, the exposure in oil and gas environment is harsher as the result of corrosive soil and groundwater, chemical spill, frequent wetting and drying, icing and de-icing, steam and heat, etc. Due to this type of exposure and the increasing level of structural defects and rectification in line with the increasing age of plants, assets integrity assessment requires a more defined scope and procedures that needs to be based on risk and assets criticality. This leads to the establishment of risk based inspection and proactive maintenance procedure for civil and structural assets. To date there is hardly any procedure and guideline as far as integrity assessment and systematic inspection and maintenance of civil and structural assets (onshore) are concerned. Group Technical Solutions has developed a procedure and guideline that takes into consideration credible failure scenario, assets risk and criticality from process safety and structural engineering perspective, structural importance, modeling and analysis among others. Detailed inspection that includes destructive and non-destructive tests (DT & NDT) and structural monitoring is also being performed to quantify defects, assess severity and impact on integrity as well as identify the timeline for integrity restoration. Each defect and its credible failure scenario is assessed against the risk on people, environment, reputation and production loss. This technical paper is intended to share on the established procedure and guideline and their execution in oil & gas plants. In line with the overall roadmap, the procedure and guideline will form part of specialized solutions to increase production and to meet the “Operational Excellence” target while extending service life of civil and structural assets. As the result of implementation, the management of civil and structural assets is now more systematically done and the “fire-fighting” mode of maintenance is being gradually phased out and replaced by a proactive and preventive approach. This technical paper will also set the criteria and pose the challenge to the industry for innovative repair and strengthening methods for civil & structural assets in oil & gas environment, in line with safety, constructability and continuous modification and revamp of plant facilities to meet production demand.

Keywords: assets criticality, credible failure scenario, proactive and preventive maintenance, risk based inspection

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Authors: Tünde Puskás, Anita Andersson

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This study is part of a research project about whether religion is considered as part of Swedish cultural heritage in Swedish preschools. Our aim in this paper is to explore how a Swedish preschool balance between keeping the education non-confessional and at the same time teaching children about a particular tradition, Easter.The paper explores how in a Swedish preschool with a religious profile teachers balance between keeping education non-confessional and teaching about a tradition with religious roots. The point of departure for the theoretical frame of our study is that practical considerations in pedagogical situations are inherently dilemmatic. The dilemmas that are of interest for our study evolve around formalized, intellectual ideologies, such us multiculturalism and secularism that have an impact on everyday practice. Educational dilemmas may also arise in the intersections of the formalized ideology of non-confessionalism, prescribed in policy documents and the common sense understandings of what is included in what is understood as Swedish cultural heritage. In this paper, religion is treated as a human worldview that, similarly to secular ideologies, can be understood as a system of thought. We make use of Ninian Smart's theoretical framework according to which in modern Western world religious and secular ideologies, as human worldviews, can be studied from the same analytical framework. In order to be able to study the distinctive character of human worldviews Smart introduced a multi-dimensional model within which the different dimensions interact with each other in various ways and to different degrees. The data for this paper is drawn from fieldwork carried out in 2015-2016 in the form of video ethnography. The empirical material chosen consists of a video recording of a specific activity during which the preschool group took part in an Easter play performed in the local church. The analysis shows that the policy of non-confessionalism together with the idea that teaching covering religious issues must be purely informational leads in everyday practice to dilemmas about what is considered religious. At the same time what the adults actually do with religion fulfills six of seven dimensions common to religious traditions as outlined by Smart. What we can also conclude from the analysis is that whether it is religion or a cultural tradition that is thought through the performance the children watched in the church depends on how the concept of religion is defined. The analysis shows that the characters of the performance themselves understood religion as the doctrine of Jesus' resurrection from the dead. This narrow understanding of religion enabled them indirectly to teach about the traditions and narratives surrounding Easter while avoiding teaching religion as a belief system.

Keywords: non-confessional education, preschool, religion, tradition

Procedia PDF Downloads 158

Authors: Kien Vu, Jien Min Soh, Mohamed Jahangir Abubacker, Piyawut Pattamanon, Soojin Lee, Suvro Banerjee

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Recent advances in Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), in particular Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise to disrupt multiple industries at scale. However, LLMs also present unique challenges, notably, these so-called "hallucination" which is the generation of outputs that are not grounded in the input data that hinders its adoption into production. Common practice to mitigate hallucination problem is utilizing Retrieval Agmented Generation (RAG) system to ground LLMs'response to ground truth. RAG converts the grounding documents into embeddings, retrieve the relevant parts with vector similarity between user's query and documents, then generates a response that is not only based on its pre-trained knowledge but also on the specific information from the retrieved documents. However, the RAG system is not suitable for tabular data and subsequent data analysis tasks due to multiple reasons such as information loss, data format, and retrieval mechanism. In this study, we have explored a novel methodology that combines planning-and-execution and code generation agents to enhance LLMs' data analysis capabilities. The approach enables LLMs to autonomously dissect a complex analytical task into simpler sub-tasks and requirements, then convert them into executable segments of code. In the final step, it generates the complete response from output of the executed code. When deployed beta version on DataSense, the property insight tool of PropertyGuru, the approach yielded promising results, as it was able to provide market insights and data visualization needs with high accuracy and extensive coverage by abstracting the complexities for real-estate agents and developers from non-programming background. In essence, the methodology not only refines the analytical process but also serves as a strategic tool for real estate professionals, aiding in market understanding and enhancement without the need for programming skills. The implication extends beyond immediate analytics, paving the way for a new era in the real estate industry characterized by efficiency and advanced data utilization.

Keywords: large language model, reasoning, planning and execution, code generation, natural language processing, prompt engineering, data analysis, real estate, data sense, PropertyGuru

Procedia PDF Downloads 86

Authors: Natia Tsiklashvili, Tamari Poladashvili

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Education is one of the fundamental factors of economic prosperity in all respects. It is impossible to talk about the sustainable economic development of the country without substantial investments in human capital and investment into higher educational institutions. Education improves the standard of living of the population and expands the opportunities to receive more benefits, which will be equally important for both the individual and the society as a whole. There are growing initiatives among educated people such as entrepreneurship, technological development, etc. At the same time, the distribution of income between population groups is improving. The given paper discusses the scientific literature in the field of sustainable development through higher educational institutions. Scholars of economic theory emphasize a few major aspects that show the role of higher education in economic growth: a) Alongside education, human capital gradually increases which leads to increased competitiveness of the labor force, not only in the national but also in the international labor market (Neoclassical growth theory), b) The high level of education can increase the efficiency of the economy, investment in human capital, innovation, and knowledge are significant contributors to economic growth. Hence, it focuses on positive externalities and spillover effects of a knowledge-based economy which leads to economic development (endogenous growth theory), c) Education can facilitate the diffusion and transfer of knowledge. Hence, it supports macroeconomic sustainability and microeconomic conditions of individuals. While discussing the economic importance of education, we consider education as the spiritual development of the human that advances general skills, acquires a profession, and improves living conditions. Scholars agree that human capital is not only money but liquid assets, stocks, and competitive knowledge. The last one is the main lever in the context of increasing human competitiveness and high productivity. To address the local issues, the present article researched ten educational institutions across Georgia, including state and private HEIs. Qualitative research was done by analyzing in-depth interweaves of representatives from each institution, and respondents were rectors/vice-rectors/heads of quality assurance service at the institute. The result shows that there is a number of challenges that institution face in order to maintain sustainable development and be the strong links to education and the labor market. Mostly it’s contacted with bureaucracy, insufficient finances they receive, and local challenges that differ across the regions.

Keywords: higher education, higher educational institutions, sustainable development, regions, Georgia

Procedia PDF Downloads 83

Authors: Gergely Horvath

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The study analyzes the special provisions of the highest level of national agricultural legislation in the Fundamental Law of Hungary (25 April 2011) with descriptive, analytic and comparative methods. The agriculturally relevant articles of the constitution are very important, because –in spite of their high level of abstraction– they can determine and serve the practice comprehensively and effectively. That is why the objective of the research is to interpret the concrete sentences and phrases in connection with agriculture compared with the methods of some other relevant constitutions (historical-grammatical interpretation). The major findings of the study focus on searching for the appropriate provisions and approach capable of solving the problems of sustainable food production. The real challenge agricultural law must face with in the future is protecting or conserving its background and subjects: the environment, the ecosystem services and all the 'roots' of food production. In effect, agricultural law is the legal aspect of the production of 'our daily bread' from farm to table. However, it also must guarantee the safe daily food for our children and for all our descendants. In connection with sustainability, this unique, value-oriented constitution of an agrarian country even deals with uncustomary questions in this level of legislation like GMOs (by banning the production of genetically modified crops). The starting point is that the principle of public good (principium boni communis) must be the leading notion of the norm, which is an idea partly outside the law. The public interest is reflected by the agricultural law mainly in the concept of public health (in connection with food security) and the security of supply with healthy food. The construed Article P claims the general protection of our natural resources as a requirement. The enumeration of the specific natural resources 'which all form part of the common national heritage' also means the conservation of the grounds of sustainable agriculture. The reference of the arable land represents the subfield of law of the protection of land (and soil conservation), that of the water resources represents the subfield of water protection, the reference of forests and the biological diversity visualize the specialty of nature conservation, which is an essential support for agrobiodiversity. The mentioned protected objects constituting the nation's common heritage metonymically melt with their protective regimes, strengthening them and forming constitutional references of law. This regimes also mean the protection of the natural foundations of the life of the living and also the future generations, in the name of intra- and intergenerational equity.

Keywords: agricultural law, constitutional values, natural resources, sustainability

Procedia PDF Downloads 166

Authors: Priyanka Tamta, Sukanya Sharma

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The Kamakhya Temple in Assam plays a very important role in the development of Assam as not only a historical place but also as an archaeologically important site. Temple building activity on the site began in 5th century AD when a cave temple dedicated to Lord Balabhadraswami was constructed here by King Maharajadhiraja Sri Surendra Varman. In the history of Assam, the name of this king is not found and neither the name of this form of Vishnu is known in this region. But this inscription sanctified the place as it recorded the first ever temple building activity in this region. The fifteen hundred years habitation history of the Kamakhya temple sites shows a gradual progression of the site from a religious site to an archaeological site and finally as a historical landmark. Here, in this paper, our main objective is to understand the evolution of Kamakhya temple site as a historical landscape and as an important landmark in the history of Assam. The central theme of the paper is the gradual development of the religious site to a historical landmark. From epigraphical records, it is known that the site received patronage from all ruling dynasties of Assam and its adjoining regions. Royal households of Kashmir, Nepal, Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, etc. have left their footprints on the site. According to records they donated wealth, constructed or renovated temples and participated in the overall maintenance of the deity. This made Kamakhya temple a ground of interaction of faiths, communities, and royalties of the region. Since the 5th century AD, there was a continuous struggle between different beliefs, faiths, and power on the site to become the dominant authority of the site. In the process, powerful beliefs system subsumed minor ones into a larger doctrine of beliefs. This can be seen in the case of the evolution of the Kamakhya temple site as one of the important Shakta temples in India. Today, it is cultural identity marker of the state of Assam within which it is located. Its diverse faiths and beliefs have been appropriated by powerful legends to the dominant faith of the land. The temple has evolved from a cave temple to a complex of seventeen temples. The faith has evolved from the worship of water, an element of nature to the worship of the ten different forms of the goddess with their five male consorts or Bhairavas. Today, it represents and symbolizes the relationship of power and control out of which it has emerged. During different periods of occupation certain architectural and iconographical characters developed which indicated diffusion and cultural adaptation. Using this as sources and the epigraphical records this paper will analyze the interactive and dynamic processes which operated in the building of this cultural marker, the archaeological site of Kamakhya.

Keywords: cultural adaptation and diffusion, cultural and historical landscape, Kamakhya, Saktism, temple art and architecture, historiography

Procedia PDF Downloads 249

Authors: Ahmed Borg, Elsa Aristodemou, Attia Attia

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Well control involves managing the circulating drilling fluid within the wells and avoiding kicks and blowouts as these can lead to losses in human life and drilling facilities. Current practices for good control incorporate predictions of pressure losses through computational models. Developing a realistic hydraulic model for a good control problem is a very complicated process due to the existence of a complex multiphase region, which usually contains a non-Newtonian drilling fluid and the miscibility of formation gas in drilling fluid. The current approaches assume an inaccurate flow fluid model within the well, which leads to incorrect pressure loss calculations. To overcome this problem, researchers have been considering the more complex two-phase fluid flow models. However, even these more sophisticated two-phase models are unsuitable for applications where pressure dynamics are important, such as in managed pressure drilling. This study aims to develop and implement new fluid flow models that take into consideration the miscibility of fluids as well as their non-Newtonian properties for enabling realistic kick treatment. furthermore, a corresponding numerical solution method is built with an enriched data bank. The research work considers and implements models that take into consideration the effect of two phases in kick treatment for well control in conventional drilling. In this work, a corresponding numerical solution method is built with an enriched data bank. Software STARCCM+ for the computational studies to study the important parameters to describe wellbore multiphase flow, the mass flow rate, volumetric fraction, and velocity of each phase. Results showed that based on the analysis of these simulation studies, a coarser full-scale model of the wellbore, including chemical modeling established. The focus of the investigations was put on the near drill bit section. This inflow area shows certain characteristics that are dominated by the inflow conditions of the gas as well as by the configuration of the mud stream entering the annulus. Without considering the gas solubility effect, the bottom hole pressure could be underestimated by 4.2%, while the bottom hole temperature is overestimated by 3.2%. and without considering the heat transfer effect, the bottom hole pressure could be overestimated by 11.4% under steady flow conditions. Besides, larger reservoir pressure leads to a larger gas fraction in the wellbore. However, reservoir pressure has a minor effect on the steady wellbore temperature. Also as choke pressure increases, less gas will exist in the annulus in the form of free gas.

Keywords: multiphase flow, well- control, STARCCM+, petroleum engineering and gas technology, computational fluid dynamic

Procedia PDF Downloads 117

Authors: Ameni Mejri, Moufida Hajjaj, Salem Hasnaoui, Ridha Bouallegue

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The technology advances have most lately made the millimeter wave (mmWave) communication possible. Due to the huge amount of spectrum that is available in MmWave frequency bands, this promising candidate is considered as a key technology for the deployment of 5G cellular networks. In order to enhance system capacity and achieve spectral efficiency, very large antenna arrays are employed at mmWave systems by exploiting array gain. However, it has been shown that conventional beamforming strategies are not suitable for mmWave hardware implementation. Therefore, new features are required for mmWave cellular applications. Unlike traditional multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems for which only digital precoders are essential to accomplish precoding, MIMO technology seems to be different at mmWave because of digital precoding limitations. Moreover, precoding implements a greater number of radio frequency (RF) chains supporting more signal mixers and analog-to-digital converters. As RF chain cost and power consumption is increasing, we need to resort to another alternative. Although the hybrid precoding architecture has been regarded as the best solution based on a combination between a baseband precoder and an RF precoder, we still do not get the optimal design of hybrid precoders. According to the mapping strategies from RF chains to the different antenna elements, there are two main categories of hybrid precoding architecture. Given as a hybrid precoding sub-array architecture, the partially-connected structure reduces hardware complexity by using a less number of phase shifters, whereas it sacrifices some beamforming gain. In this paper, we treat the hybrid precoder design in mmWave MIMO systems as a problem of matrix factorization. Thus, we adopt the alternating minimization principle in order to solve the design problem. Further, we present our proposed algorithm for the partially-connected structure, which is based on the iterative hard thresholding method. Through simulation results, we show that our hybrid precoding algorithm provides significant performance gains over existing algorithms. We also show that the proposed approach reduces significantly the computational complexity. Furthermore, valuable design insights are provided when we use the proposed algorithm to make simulation comparisons between the hybrid precoding partially-connected structure and the fully-connected structure.

Keywords: alternating minimization, hybrid precoding, iterative hard thresholding, low-complexity, millimeter wave communication, partially-connected structure

Procedia PDF Downloads 321

Authors: Sanjay Shukla

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Excessive use of antibiotics is a main problem in the treatment of wounds and other chronic infections and antibiotic treatment is frequently non-curative, thus alternative treatment is necessary. Phage therapy is considered one of the most effective approaches to treat multi-drug resistant bacterial pathogens. Infections caused by Staphylococcus aureus are very efficiently controlled with phage cocktails, containing a different individual phages lysate infecting a majority of known pathogenic S. aureus strains. The aim of current study was to investigate the efficiency of a purified phage cocktail for prophylactic as well as therapeutic application in mouse model and in large animals with chronic septic infection of wounds. A total of 150 sewage samples were collected from various livestock farms. These samples were subjected for the isolation of bacteriophage by double agar layer method. A total of 27 sewage samples showed plaque formation by producing lytic activity against S. aureus in double agar overlay method out of 150 sewage samples. In TEM recovered isolates of bacteriophages showed hexagonal structure with tail fiber. In the bacteriophage (ØVS) had an icosahedral symmetry with the head size 52.20 nm in diameter and long tail of 109 nm. Head and tail were held together by connector and can be classified as a member of the Myoviridae family under the order of Caudovirale. Recovered bacteriophage had shown the antibacterial activity against the S. aureus in vitro. Cocktail (ØVS1, ØVS5, ØVS9 and ØVS 27) of phage lysate were tested to know in vivo antibacterial activity as well as the safety profile. Result of mice experiment indicated that the bacteriophage lysate was very safe, did not show any appearance of abscess formation which indicates its safety in living system. The mice were also prophylactically protected against S. aureus when administered with cocktail of bacteriophage lysate just before the administration of S. aureus which indicates that they are good prophylactic agent. The S. aureus inoculated mice were completely recovered by bacteriophage administration with 100% recovery which was very good as compere to conventional therapy. In present study ten chronic cases of wound were treated with phage lysate and follow up of these cases was done regularly up to ten days (at 0, 5 and 10 d). Result indicated that the six cases out of ten showed complete recovery of wounds within 10 d. The efficacy of bacteriophage therapy was found to be 60% which was very good as compared to the conventional antibiotic therapy in chronic septic wounds infections. Thus, the application of lytic phage in single dose proved to be innovative and effective therapy for treatment of septic chronic wounds.

Keywords: phage therapy, phage lysate, antimicrobial resistance, S. aureus

Procedia PDF Downloads 116

Authors: Till Gramberg

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In the dynamic world of machine and plant engineering, stagnation in the growth of new product sales compels companies to reconsider their business models. The increasing shift toward service orientation, known as "servitization," along with challenges posed by digitalization and sustainability, necessitates an adaptation of product portfolio management (PPM). Against this backdrop, this study investigates the current challenges and requirements of PPM in this industrial context and develops a framework for the application of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance agility and efficiency in PPM processes. The research approach of this study is based on a mixed-method design. Initially, qualitative interviews with industry experts were conducted to gain a deep understanding of the specific challenges and requirements in PPM. These interviews were analyzed using the Gioia method, painting a detailed picture of the existing issues and needs within the sector. This was complemented by a quantitative online survey. The combination of qualitative and quantitative research enabled a comprehensive understanding of the current challenges in the practical application of machine and plant engineering PPM. Based on these insights, a specific framework for the application of generative AI in PPM was developed. This framework aims to assist companies in implementing faster and more agile processes, systematically integrating dynamic requirements from trends such as digitalization and sustainability into their PPM process. Utilizing generative AI technologies, companies can more quickly identify and respond to trends and market changes, allowing for a more efficient and targeted adaptation of the product portfolio. The study emphasizes the importance of an agile and reactive approach to PPM in a rapidly changing environment. It demonstrates how generative AI can serve as a powerful tool to manage the complexity of a diversified and continually evolving product portfolio. The developed framework offers practical guidelines and strategies for companies to improve their PPM processes by leveraging the latest technological advancements while maintaining ecological and social responsibility. This paper significantly contributes to deepening the understanding of the application of generative AI in PPM and provides a framework for companies to manage their product portfolios more effectively and adapt to changing market conditions. The findings underscore the relevance of continuous adaptation and innovation in PPM strategies and demonstrate the potential of generative AI for proactive and future-oriented business management.

Keywords: servitization, product portfolio management, generative AI, disruptive innovation, machine and plant engineering

Procedia PDF Downloads 81

Authors: Giorgi Gaprindashvili

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One of the best examples, in evolution of the public procurement, from post-soviet countries are reforms carried out in Georgia, which brought them close to international standards of procurement. In Georgia, public procurement legislation started functioning in 1998. The reform has passed several stages and came in the form as it is today. It should also be noted, that countries with economy in transition, including Georgia, implemented all the reforms in public procurement based on recommendations and support of World Bank, the United Nations and other international organizations. The first law on public procurement in Georgia was adopted on December 9, 1998 which aimed regulation of the procurement process of budget-organizations, transparent and competitive environment for private companies to access state funds legally. The priorities were identified quite clearly in the wording of the law, but operation/function of this law could not be reached on its level, because of some objective and subjective reasons. The high level of corruption in all levels of governance, can be considered as a main obstacle reason and of course, it is natural, that it had direct impact on the procurement process, as well as on transparency and rational use of state funds. This circumstances were the reasons that reforms in this sphere continued, to improve procurement process, in particular, the first wave of reforms began in 2001. Public procurement agency carried out reform with World Bank with main purpose of smartening the procurement legislation and its harmonization with international treaties and agreements. Also with the support of World Bank various activities were carried out to raise awareness of participants involved in procurement system. Further major changes in the legislation were filed in May 2005, which was also directed towards the improvement and smarten of the procurement process. The third wave of the reform began in 2010, which more or less guaranteed the transparency of the procurement process, which later became the basis for the rational spending of state funds. The reform of the procurement system completely changed the procedures. Carried out reform in Georgia resulted in introducing new electronic tendering system, which benefit the transparency of the process, after this became the basis for the further development of a competitive environment, which become a prerequisite for the state rational spending. Increased number of supplier organizations participating in the procurement process resulted in reduction of the estimated cost and the actual cost from 20% up to 40%, it is quite large saving for the procuring organizations and allows them to use the freed-up funds for their other needs. Assessment of the reforms in Georgia in the field of public procurement can be concluded, that proper regulation of the sector and relevant policy may proceed to rational and transparent spending of the budget from country’s state institutions. Also, the business sector has the opportunity to work in competitive market conditions and to make a preliminary analysis, which is a prerequisite for future strategy and development.

Keywords: public administration, public procurement, reforms, transparency

Procedia PDF Downloads 366

Authors: Ravshan A. Ibadov, Sardor Kh. Ibragimov

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Objective. The aim of the study was to optimize the protocol of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after cardiovascular surgical interventions. Methods. The experience of CPR conducted on patients after cardiovascular surgical interventions in the Department of Intensive Care and Resuscitation (DIR) of the Republican Specialized Scientific-Practical Medical Center of Surgery named after Academician V. Vakhidov is presented. The key to the new approach is the rapid elimination of reversible causes of cardiac arrest, followed by either defibrillation or electrical cardioversion (depending on the situation) before external heart compression, which may damage sternotomy. Careful use of adrenaline is emphasized due to the potential recurrence of hypertension, and timely resternotomy (within 5 minutes) is performed to ensure optimal cerebral perfusion through direct massage. Out of 32 patients, cardiac arrest in the form of asystole was observed in 16 (50%), with hypoxemia as the cause, while the remaining 16 (50%) experienced ventricular fibrillation caused by arrhythmogenic reactions. The age of the patients ranged from 6 to 60 years. All patients were evaluated before the operation using the ASA and EuroSCORE scales, falling into the moderate-risk group (3-5 points). CPR was conducted for cardiac activity restoration according to the American Heart Association and European Resuscitation Council guidelines (Ley SJ. Standards for Resuscitation After Cardiac Surgery. Critical Care Nurse. 2015;35(2):30-38). The duration of CPR ranged from 8 to 50 minutes. The ARASNE II scale was used to assess the severity of patients' conditions after CPR, and the Glasgow Coma Scale was employed to evaluate patients' consciousness after the restoration of cardiac activity and sedation withdrawal. Results. In all patients, immediate chest compressions of the necessary depth (4-5 cm) at a frequency of 100-120 compressions per minute were initiated upon detection of cardiac arrest. Regardless of the type of cardiac arrest, defibrillation with a manual defibrillator was performed 3-5 minutes later, and adrenaline was administered in doses ranging from 100 to 300 mcg. Persistent ventricular fibrillation was also treated with antiarrhythmic therapy (amiodarone, lidocaine). If necessary, infusion of inotropes and vasopressors was used, and for the prevention of brain edema and the restoration of adequate neurostatus within 1-3 days, sedation, a magnesium-lidocaine mixture, mechanical intranasal cooling of the brain stem, and neuroprotective drugs were employed. A coordinated effort by the resuscitation team and proper role allocation within the team were essential for effective cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). All these measures contributed to the improvement of CPR outcomes. Conclusion. Successful CPR following cardiac surgical interventions involves interdisciplinary collaboration. The application of an optimized CPR standard leads to a reduction in mortality rates and favorable neurological outcomes.

Keywords: cardiac surgery, cardiac arrest, resuscitation, critically ill patients

Procedia PDF Downloads 52

Authors: Shing-Cheng Chang, Cheng-Hao Yang, Wen-Sheng Chang, Chih-Chia Lin, Chun-Han Li

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The solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is a promising green technology which can achieve a high electrical efficiency. Due to the high operating temperature of SOFC stack, the off-gases at high temperature from anode and cathode outlets are introduced into an afterburner to convert the chemical energy into thermal energy by combustion. The heat is recovered to preheat the fresh air and fuel gases before they pass through the stack during the SOFC power generation system operation. For an afterburner of the SOFC system, the temperature control with a good thermal uniformity is important. A burner with a well-designed geometry usually can achieve a satisfactory performance. To design an afterburner for an SOFC system, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is adoptable. In this paper, the hydrogen combustion characteristics in an afterburner with simple geometry are studied by using CFD. The burner is constructed by a cylinder chamber with the configuration of a fuel gas inlet, an air inlet, and an exhaust outlet. The flow field and temperature distributions inside the afterburner under different fuel and air flow rates are analyzed. To improve the temperature uniformity of the afterburner during the SOFC system operation, the flow paths of anode/cathode off-gases are varied by changing the positions of fuels and air inlet channel to improve the heat and flow field synergy in the burner furnace. Because the air flow rate is much larger than the fuel gas, the flow structure and heat transfer in the afterburner is dominated by the air flow path. The present work studied the effects of fluid flow structures on the combustion characteristics of an SOFC afterburner by three simulation models with a cylindrical combustion chamber and a tapered outlet. All walls in the afterburner are assumed to be no-slip and adiabatic. In each case, two set of parameters are simulated to study the transport phenomena of hydrogen combustion. The equivalence ratios are in the range of 0.08 to 0.1. Finally, the pattern factor for the simulation cases is calculated to investigate the effect of gas inlet locations on the temperature uniformity of the SOFC afterburner. The results show that the temperature uniformity of the exhaust gas can be improved by simply adjusting the position of the gas inlet. The field synergy analysis indicates the design of the fluid flow paths should be in the way that can significantly contribute to the heat transfer, i.e. the field synergy angle should be as small as possible. In the study cases, the averaged synergy angle of the burner is about 85̊, 84̊, and 81̊ respectively.

Keywords: afterburner, combustion, field synergy, solid oxide fuel cell

Procedia PDF Downloads 132

Authors: Anshu Radha Aggarwal

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Higher Education (HE) in the India has experienced a series of remarkable changes over the last fifteen years as successive governments have sought to make the sector more efficient and more accountable for investment of public funds. Rapid expansion in student numbers and pressures to widen Participation amongst non-traditional students are key challenges facing HE. Learning outcomes can act as a benchmark for assuring quality and efficiency in HE and they also enable universities to describe courses in an unambiguous way so as to demystify (and open up) education to a wider audience. This paper examines how learning outcomes are used in HE and evaluates the implications for curriculum design and student learning. There has been huge expansion in the field of higher education, both technical and non-technical, in India during the last two decades, and this trend is continuing. It is expected that another about 400 colleges and 300 universities will be created by the end of the 13th Plan Period. This has lead to many concerns about the quality of education and training of our students. Many studies have brought the issues ailing our curricula, delivery, monitoring and assessment. Govt. of India, (via MHRD, UGC, NBA,…) has initiated several steps to bring improvement in quality of higher education and training, such as National Skills Qualification Framework, making accreditation of institutions mandatory in order to receive Govt. grants, and so on. Moreover, Outcome-based Education and Training (OBET) has also been mandated and encouraged in the teaching/learning institutions. MHRD, UGC and NBAhas made accreditation of schools, colleges and universities mandatory w.e.f Jan 2014. Outcome-based Education and Training (OBET) approach is learner-centric, whereas the traditional approach has been teacher-centric. OBET is a process which involves the re-orientation/restructuring the curriculum, implementation, assessment/measurements of educational goals, and achievement of higher order learning, rather than merely clearing/passing the university examinations. OBET aims to bring about these desired changes within the students, by increasing knowledge, developing skills, influencing attitudes and creating social-connect mind-set. This approach has been adopted by several leading universities and institutions around the world in advanced countries. Objectives of this paper is to highlight the issues concerning quality in higher education and quality frameworks, to deliberate on the various education and training models, to explain the outcome-based education and assessment processes, to provide an understanding of the NAAC and outcome-based accreditation criteria and processes and to share best-practice outcomes-based accreditation system and process.

Keywords: learning outcomes, curriculum development, pedagogy, outcome based education

Procedia PDF Downloads 523

Authors: Filip Majetić, Dražen Šimleša, Jelena Puđak, Anita Bušljeta Tonković, Svitlana Pinchuk

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This paper focuses on the self-sustainability aspect of social entrepreneurship (SE). We define SE as a form of entrepreneurship that is social/ecological mission oriented. It means SE organizations start and run businesses and use them to accomplish their social/ecological missions i.e. to solve social/ecological problems or fulfill social/ecological needs. Self-sustainability is defined as the capability of an SE organization to operate by relying on the money earned through trading its products in the free market. For various reasons, the achievement of self-sustainability represents a fundamental (business) challenge for many SE organizations. Those that are not able to operate using the money made through commercial activities, in order to remain active, rely on alternative, non-commercial streams of income such as grants, donations, and public subsidies. Starting from this widespread (business) challenge, we are interested in exploring elements that (could) influence the self-sustainability in SE organizations. Therefore, the research goal is to empirically investigate some of the self-sustainability factors of two notable SE organizations from different socio-economic contexts. A qualitative research, using the multiple case study approach, was conducted. ACT Group Čakovec (ACT) from Croatia was selected for the first case because it represents one of the leading and most self-sustainable SE organization in the region (in 2015 55% of the organization’s budget came from commercial activities); Friskis&Svettis Stockholm (F&S) from Sweden was selected for the second case because it is a rare example of completely self-sustainable SE organization in Europe (100% of the organization’s budget comes from commercial activities). The data collection primarily consists of conducting in-depth interviews. Additionally, the content of some of the organizations' official materials are analyzed (e.g. business reports, marketing materials). The interviewees are selected purposively and include: six highly ranked F&S members who represent five different levels in the hierarchy of their organization; five highly ranked ACT members who represent three different levels in the hierarchy of the organization. All of the interviews contain five themes: a) social values of the organization, b) organization of work, c) non-commercial income sources, d) marketing/collaborations, and e) familiarity with the industry characteristics and trends. The gathered data is thematically analyzed through the coding process for which Atlas.ti software for qualitative data analysis is used. For the purpose of creating thematic categories (codes), the open coding is used. The research results intend to provide new theoretical insights on factors of SE self-sustainability and, preferably, encourage practical improvements in the field.

Keywords: Friskis&Svettis, self-sustainability factors, social entrepreneurship, Stockholm

Procedia PDF Downloads 217

Authors: Ayla Roberta Galaco, Juliana Fonseca De Lima, Osvaldo Antonio Serra

Abstract:

Coordination polymers, also known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) or lanthanoide organic frameworks (LOFs) have been reported due of their promising applications in gas storage, separation, catalysis, luminescence, magnetism, drug delivery, and so on. As a type of organic–inorganic hybrid materials, the properties of coordination polymers could be chosen by deliberately selecting the organic and inorganic components. LOFs have received considerable attention because of their properties such as porosity, luminescence, and magnetism. Methods such as solvothermal synthesis are important as a strategy to control the structural and morphological properties as well as the composition of the target compounds. In this work the first solvothermal synthesis was employed to obtain the compound [Y0.4,Yb0.4,Er0.2(dmf)(for)(H2O)(tft)], by using terephthalic acid (tft) and oxalic acid, decomposed in formate (for), as ligands; Yttrium, Ytterbium and, Erbium as metal centers, in DMF and water for 4 days under 160 °C. The semi-rigid terephthalic acid (dicarboxylic) coordinates with Ln3+ ions and also is possible to form a polyfunctional bridge. On the other hand, oxalate anion has no high-energy vibrational groups, which benefits the excitation of Yb3+ in upconversion process. It was observed that the compounds with water molecules in the coordination sphere of the lanthanoide ions cause lower crystalline properties and change the structure of the LOF (1D, 2D, 3D). In the FTIR, the bands at 1589 and 1500 cm-1 correspond to the asymmetric stretching vibration of –COO. The band at 1383 cm-1 is assigned to the symmetric stretching vibration of –COO. Single crystal X-ray diffraction study reveals an infinite 3D coordination framework that crystalizes in space group P21/c. The other three products, [TR(chel)(ofd)0,5(H2O)2], where TR= Eu3+, Y3, and Yb3+/Er3+ were obtained by using 1, 2-phenylenedioxydiacetic acid (ofd) and chelidonic acid (chel) as organic ligands. Thermal analysis shows that the lanthanoide organic frameworks do not collapse at temperatures below 250 °C. By the polycrystalline X-ray diffraction patterns (PXRD) it was observed that the compounds with Eu3+, Y3+, and Yb3+/Er3+ ions are isostructural. From PXRD patterns, high crystallinity can be noticed for the complexes. The final products were characterized by single X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The X-ray diffraction (XRD) is an effective method to investigate crystalline properties of synthesized materials. The solid crystal obtained in the synthesis show peaks at 2θ < 10°, indicating the MOF formation. The chemical composition of LOFs was also confirmed by EDS.

Keywords: isostructural, lanthanoids, lanthanoids organic frameworks (LOFs), metal organic frameworks (MOFs), thermogravimetry, X-Ray diffraction

Procedia PDF Downloads 259

Authors: F. Ghani, T. S. O’Donovan

Abstract:

Today, the global solar thermal market is dominated by two collector types; the flat plate and evacuated tube collector. With regards to the number of installations worldwide, the evacuated tube collector is the dominant variant primarily due to the Chinese market but the flat plate collector dominates both the Australian and European markets. The market share of the evacuated tube collector is, however, growing in Australia due to a common belief that this collector type is ‘more efficient’ and, therefore, the better choice for hot water applications. In this study, we investigate this issue further to assess the validity of this statement. This was achieved by methodically comparing the performance and economics of several solar thermal systems comprising of; a low-performance flat plate collector, a high-performance flat collector, and an evacuated tube collector coupled with a storage tank and pump. All systems were simulated using the commercial software package Polysun for four climate zones in Australia to take into account different weather profiles in the study and subjected to a thermal load equivalent to a household comprising of four people. Our study revealed that the energy savings and payback periods varied significantly for systems operating under specific environmental conditions. Solar fractions ranged between 58 and 100 per cent, while payback periods range between 3.8 and 10.1 years. Although the evacuated tube collector was found to operate with a marginally higher thermal efficiency over the selective surface flat plate collector due to reduced ambient heat loss, the high-performance flat plate collector outperformed the evacuated tube collector on thermal yield. This result was obtained as the flat plate collector possesses a significantly higher absorber to gross collector area ratio over the evacuated tube collector. Furthermore, it was found for Australian regions operating with a high average solar radiation intensity and ambient temperature, the lower performance collector is the preferred choice due to favorable economics and reduced stagnation temperature. Our study has provided additional insight into the thermal performance and economics of the two prevalent solar thermal collectors currently available. A computational investigation has been carried out specifically for the Australian climate due to its geographic size and significant variation in weather. For domestic hot water applications were fluid temperatures between 50 and 60 degrees Celsius are sought, the flat plate collector is both technically and economically favorable over the evacuated tube collector. This research will be useful to system design engineers, solar thermal manufacturers, and those involved in policy to encourage the implementation of solar thermal systems into the hot water market.

Keywords: solar thermal, energy analysis, flat plate, evacuated tube, collector performance

Procedia PDF Downloads 208