Search results for: state space model

Authors: Eliziane Navarro, Aparecida Citta

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Child of the dark is the work of the Brazilian author Carolina Maria de Jesus published at the first time by Ática & Francisco Alves in 1960. It is, mostly, a story of lack of rights. It lacks to men who live in the slums what is essential in order to take advantage of the privilege of rationality to develop themselves as civilized humans. It is, therefore, in the withholding of the basic rights that inequality finds space to build itself to be the main misery on Earth. Antonio Candido, a Brazilian sociologist, claims that it is the right to literature has the ability to humanize men, once the aptitude to create fiction and fable is essential to the social balance. Hence, for the forming role that literature holds, it must be thought as the number of rights that assure human dignity, such as housing, education, health, freedom, etc. When talking about her routine, Carolina puts in evidence something that has great influence over the formation of human beings, contributing to the way they live: the slum. Even though it happens in a distinct way and using her linguistics variation, Carolina writes about something that will only be discussed later on Brazil’s Cities Statute and Ermia Maricato: the right to the city, and how the slums are, although inserted in the city, an attachment, an illegal city, a dismissing room. It interests ourselves, for that matter, in this work, to analyse how the deprivation of the rights to the city and literature, detailed in Carolina’s journal, conditions human beings to a life where the instincts overcome the social values.

Keywords: Child of the dark, slum, Brazil, architecture and literature

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Authors: Nilufar Chowdhury, Fereydoun Najafian Jazi, Omid Ghasemi-Fare

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The thermal effect on soil properties induces significant variations in hydraulic conductivity, which is attributable to temperature-dependent transitions in soil properties. With the elevation of temperature, there can be a notable increase in intrinsic permeability due to the degeneration of bound water molecules into a free state facilitated by thermal energy input. Conversely, thermal consolidation may cause a reduction in intrinsic permeability as soil particles undergo densification. This thermal response of soil permeability exhibits pronounced heterogeneity across different soil types. Furthermore, this temperature-induced disruption of the bound water within clay matrices can enhance the mineral-to-mineral contact, initiating irreversible deformation within the clay structure. This indicates that when soil undergoes heating-cooling cycles, plastic strain can develop, which needs to be investigated for every soil type to understand the thermo-hydro mechanical behavior of clay properly. This research aims to study the effect of the heating-cooling cycle on the intrinsic permeability and time-dependent evaluation of thermal volume change of sodium Bentonite clay. A temperature-controlled triaxial permeameter cell is used in this study. The selected temperature is 20° C, 40° C, 40° C and 80° C. The hydraulic conductivity of Bentonite clay under 100 kPa confining stresses was measured. Hydraulic conductivity analysis was performed on a saturated sample for a void ratio e = 0.9, corresponding to a dry density of 1.2 Mg/m3. Different hydraulic gradients were applied between the top and bottom of the sample to obtain a measurable flow through the sample. The hydraulic gradient used for the experiment was 4000. The diameter and thickness of the sample are 101. 6 mm, and 25.4 mm, respectively. Both for heating and cooling, the hydraulic conductivity at each temperature is measured after the flow reaches the steady state condition to make sure the volume change due to thermal loading is stabilized. Thus, soil specimens were kept at a constant temperature during both the heating and cooling phases for at least 10-18 days to facilitate the equilibration of hydraulic transients. To assess the influence of temperature-induced volume changes of Bentonite clay, the evaluation of void ratio change during this time period has been monitored. It is observed that the intrinsic permeability increases by 30-40% during the heating cycle. The permeability during the cooling cycle is 10-12% lower compared to the permeability observed during the heating cycle at a particular temperature. This reduction in permeability implies a change in soil fabric due to the thermal effect. An initial increase followed by a rapid decrease in void ratio was observed, representing the occurrence of possible osmotic swelling phenomena followed by thermal consolidation. It has been observed that after a complete heating-cooling cycle, there is a significant change in the void ratio compared to the initial void ratio of the sample. The results obtained suggest that Bentonite clay’s microstructure can change subject to a complete heating-cooling process, which regulates macro behavior such as the permeability of Bentonite clay.

Keywords: bentonite, permeability, temperature, thermal volume change

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Authors: Sheren H. Salah

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The inverted pendulum is a highly nonlinear and open-loop unstable system. An inverted pendulum (IP) is a pendulum which has its mass above its pivot point. It is often implemented with the pivot point mounted on a cart that can move horizontally and may be called a cart and pole. The characteristics of the inverted pendulum make identification and control more challenging. This paper presents the simulation study of several control strategies for an inverted pendulum system. The goal is to determine which control strategy delivers better performance with respect to pendulum’s angle. The inverted pendulum represents a challenging control problem, which continually moves toward an uncontrolled state. For controlling the inverted pendulum. The simulation study that sliding mode control (SMC) control produced better response compared to Genetic Algorithm Control (GAs) and proportional-integral-derivative(PID) control.

Keywords: Inverted Pendulum (IP) Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID), Genetic Algorithm Control (GAs), Sliding Mode Control (SMC)

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Authors: Alexander Vandesompele, Joni Dambre

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The diversity in dendritic arborization, as first illustrated by Santiago Ramon y Cajal, has always suggested a role for dendrites in the functionality of neurons. In the past decades, thanks to new recording techniques and optical stimulation methods, it has become clear that dendrites are not merely passive electrical components. They are observed to integrate inputs in a non-linear fashion and actively participate in computations. Regardless, in simulations of neural networks dendritic structure and functionality are often overlooked. Especially in a machine learning context, when designing artificial neural networks, point neuron models such as the leaky-integrate-and-fire (LIF) model are dominant. These models mimic the integration of inputs at the neuron soma, and ignore the existence of dendrites. In this work, the LIF point neuron model is extended with a simple form of dendritic computation. This gives the LIF neuron increased capacity to discriminate spatiotemporal input sequences, a dendritic functionality as observed in another study. Simulations of the spiking neurons are performed using the Bindsnet framework. In the common LIF model, incoming synapses are independent. Here, we introduce a dependency between incoming synapses such that the post-synaptic impact of a spike is not only determined by the weight of the synapse, but also by the activity of other synapses. This is a form of short term plasticity where synapses are potentiated or depressed by the preceding activity of neighbouring synapses. This is a straightforward way to prevent inputs from simply summing linearly at the soma. To implement this, each pair of synapses on a neuron is assigned a variable,representing the synaptic relation. This variable determines the magnitude ofthe short term plasticity. These variables can be chosen randomly or, more interestingly, can be learned using a form of Hebbian learning. We use Spike-Time-Dependent-Plasticity (STDP), commonly used to learn synaptic strength magnitudes. If all neurons in a layer receive the same input, they tend to learn the same through STDP. Adding inhibitory connections between the neurons creates a winner-take-all (WTA) network. This causes the different neurons to learn different input sequences. To illustrate the impact of the proposed dendritic mechanism, even without learning, we attach five input neurons to two output neurons. One output neuron isa regular LIF neuron, the other output neuron is a LIF neuron with dendritic relationships. Then, the five input neurons are allowed to fire in a particular order. The membrane potentials are reset and subsequently the five input neurons are fired in the reversed order. As the regular LIF neuron linearly integrates its inputs at the soma, the membrane potential response to both sequences is similar in magnitude. In the other output neuron, due to the dendritic mechanism, the membrane potential response is different for both sequences. Hence, the dendritic mechanism improves the neuron’s capacity for discriminating spa-tiotemporal sequences. Dendritic computations improve LIF neurons even if the relationships between synapses are established randomly. Ideally however, a learning rule is used to improve the dendritic relationships based on input data. It is possible to learn synaptic strength with STDP, to make a neuron more sensitive to its input. Similarly, it is possible to learn dendritic relationships with STDP, to make the neuron more sensitive to spatiotemporal input sequences. Feeding structured data to a WTA network with dendritic computation leads to a significantly higher number of discriminated input patterns. Without the dendritic computation, output neurons are less specific and may, for instance, be activated by a sequence in reverse order.

Keywords: dendritic computation, spiking neural networks, point neuron model

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Authors: Amauri Josafat Gomez Aguilar, Jean Pierre Kenné

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This research presents the development of a self-sustainable manufacturing system from a circular economy perspective, structured by a multi-stage serial production system consisting of a series of machines under deterioration in charge of producing a single product and a reverse remanufacturing system constituted by the same productive systems of the first scheme and different tooling, fed by-products collected at the end of their life cycle, and non-conforming elements of the first productive scheme. Since the advanced production manufacturing system is unable to satisfy the customer's quality expectations completely, we propose the development of a mixed integer linear mathematical model focused on the optimal search and assignment of quality stations and preventive maintenance operation to the machines over a time horizon, intending to segregate the correct number of non-conforming parts for reuse in the remanufacturing system and thereby minimizing production, quality, maintenance, and customer non-conformance penalties. Numerical experiments are performed to analyze the solutions found by the model under different scenarios. The results showed that the correct implementation of a closed manufacturing system and allocation of quality inspection and preventive maintenance operations generate better levels of customer satisfaction and an efficient manufacturing system.

Keywords: closed loop, mixed integer linear programming, preventive maintenance, quality inspection

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Authors: Zhang Kehan, Du Luona

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Wireless power transfer (WPT) systems have been widely investigated for advantages of convenience and safety compared to traditional plug-in charging systems. The research contents include impedance matching, circuit topology, transfer distance et al. for improving the efficiency of WPT system, which is a decisive factor in the practical application. What is more, coil structures such as spiral circular coil and helical coil with variable distance between two turns also have indispensable effects on the efficiency of WPT systems. This paper compares the efficiency of WPT systems utilizing spiral or helical coil with variable distance between two turns, and experimental results show that efficiency of spiral circular coil with an optimum distance between two turns is the highest. According to efficiency formula of resonant WPT system with series-series topology, we introduce M²/R₋₁ to measure the efficiency of spiral circular coil and helical coil WPT system. If the distance between two turns s is too close, proximity effect theory shows that the induced current in the conductor, caused by a variable flux created by the current flows in the skin of vicinity conductor, is the opposite direction of source current and has assignable impart on coil resistance. Thus in two coil structures, s affects coil resistance. At the same time, when the distance between primary and secondary coils is not variable, s can also make the influence on M to some degrees. The aforementioned study proves that s plays an indispensable role in changing M²/R₋₁ and then can be adjusted to find the optimum value with which WPT system achieves the highest efficiency. In actual application situations of WPT systems especially in underwater vehicles, miniaturization is one vital issue in designing WPT system structures. Limited by system size, the largest external radius of spiral circular coil is 100 mm, and the largest height of helical coil is 40 mm. In other words, the turn of coil N changes with s. In spiral circular and helical structures, the distance between each two turns in secondary coil is set as a constant value 1 mm to guarantee that the R2 is not variable. Based on the analysis above, we set up spiral circular coil and helical coil model using COMSOL to analyze the value of M²/R₋₁ when the distance between each two turns in primary coil sp varies from 0 mm to 10 mm. In the two structure models, the distance between primary and secondary coils is 50 mm and wire diameter is chosen as 1.5 mm. The turn of coil in secondary coil are 27 in helical coil model and 20 in spiral circular coil model. The best value of s in helical coil structure and spiral circular coil structure are 1 mm and 2 mm respectively, in which the value of M²/R₋₁ is the largest. It is obviously to select spiral circular coil as the first choice to design the WPT system for that the value of M²/R₋₁ in spiral circular coil is larger than that in helical coil under the same condition.

Keywords: distance between two turns, helical coil, spiral circular coil, wireless power transfer

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Authors: Sahila Chopra, Hemdeep, Arshdeep Kaur, Raj K. Gupta

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In recent times, we noticed an interesting and important role of non-coplanar degree-of-freedom (Φ = 00) in heavy ion reactions. Using the dynamical cluster-decay model (DCM) with Φ degree-of-freedom included, we have studied three compound systems 246Bk∗, 164Yb∗ and 105Ag∗. Here, within the DCM with pocket formula for nuclear proximity potential, we look for the effects of including compact, non-coplanar configurations (Φc = 00) on the non-compound nucleus (nCN) contribution in total fusion cross section σfus. For 246Bk∗, formed in 11B+235U and 14N+232Th reaction channels, the DCM with coplanar nuclei (Φc = 00) shows an nCN contribution for 11B+235U channel, but none for 14N+232Th channel, which on including Φ gives both reaction channels as pure compound nucleus decays. In the case of 164Yb∗, formed in 64Ni+100Mo, the small nCN effects for Φ=00 are reduced to almost zero for Φ = 00. Interestingly, however, 105Ag∗ for Φ = 00 shows a small nCN contribution, which gets strongly enhanced for Φ = 00, such that the characteristic property of PCN presents a change of behaviour, like that of a strongly fissioning superheavy element to a weakly fissioning nucleus; note that 105Ag∗ is a weakly fissioning nucleus and Psurv behaves like one for a weakly fissioning nucleus for both Φ = 00 and Φ = 00. Apparently, Φ is presenting itself like a good degree-of-freedom in the DCM.

Keywords: dynamical cluster-decay model, fusion cross sections, non-compound nucleus effects, non-coplanarity

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Authors: Lacramioara Ochiuz, Aurelia Vasile, Iulian Stoleriu, Cristina Ghiciuc, Maria Ignat

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Topical administration of chemotherapeutic agents (eg. carmustine, bexarotene, mechlorethamine etc.) in local treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) is accompanied by multiple side effects, such as contact hypersensitivity, pruritus, skin atrophy or even secondary malignancies. A known method of reducing the side effects of anticancer agent is the development of modified drug release systems using drug incapsulation in biocompatible nanoporous inorganic matrices, such as mesoporous MCM-41 silica. Mesoporous MCM-41 silica is characterized by large specific surface, high pore volume, uniform porosity, and stable dispersion in aqueous medium, excellent biocompatibility, in vivo biodegradability and capacity to be functionalized with different organic groups. Therefore, MCM-41 is an attractive candidate for a wide range of biomedical applications, such as controlled drug release, bone regeneration, protein immobilization, enzymes, etc. The main advantage of this material lies in its ability to host a large amount of the active substance in uniform pore system with adjustable size in a mesoscopic range. Silanol groups allow surface controlled functionalization leading to control of drug loading and release. This study shows (I) the amino-grafting optimization of mesoporous MCM-41 silica matrix by means of co-condensation during synthesis and post-synthesis using APTES (3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane); (ii) loading the therapeutic agent (carmustine) obtaining a modified drug release systems; (iii) determining the profile of in vitro carmustine release from these systems; (iv) assessment of carmustine release kinetics by fitting on four mathematical models. Obtained powders have been described in terms of structure, texture, morphology thermogravimetric analysis. The concentration of the therapeutic agent in the dissolution medium has been determined by HPLC method. In vitro dissolution tests have been done using cell Enhancer in a 12 hours interval. Analysis of carmustine release kinetics from mesoporous systems was made by fitting to zero-order model, first-order model Higuchi model and Korsmeyer-Peppas model, respectively. Results showed that both types of highly ordered mesoporous silica (amino grafted by co-condensation process or post-synthesis) are thermally stable in aqueous medium. In what regards the degree of loading and efficiency of loading with the therapeutic agent, there has been noticed an increase of around 10% in case of co-condensation method application. This result shows that direct co-condensation leads to even distribution of amino groups on the pore walls while in case of post-synthesis grafting many amino groups are concentrated near the pore opening and/or on external surface. In vitro dissolution tests showed an extended carmustine release (more than 86% m/m) both from systems based on silica functionalized directly by co-condensation and after synthesis. Assessment of carmustine release kinetics revealed a release through diffusion from all studied systems as a result of fitting to Higuchi model. The results of this study proved that amino-functionalized mesoporous silica may be used as a matrix for optimizing the anti-cancer topical therapy by loading carmustine and developing prolonged-release systems.

Keywords: carmustine, silica, controlled, release

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Authors: Pranita Shivankar, Devashree Hardas, Prabodhachandra Deshmukh, Arun Suryavanshi

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Bhimbetka Rock Shelters is the UNESCO World Heritage Site located about 45 kilometers south of Bhopal in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. Rapid changes in land use land cover (LULC) adversely affect the environment. In recent past, significant changes are found in the cultural landscape over a period of time. The objective of the paper was to study the changes in land use land cover (LULC) of Bhimbetka and its peripheral region. For this purpose, the supervised classification was carried out by using satellite images of Landsat and IRS LISS III for the year 2000 and 2013. Use of remote sensing in combination with geographic information system is one of the effective information technology tools to generate land use land cover (LULC) change information.

Keywords: IRS LISS III, Landsat, LULC, UNESCO, World Heritage Site

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Authors: Colin Schmidt, Adrien Lecossier, Pascal Crubleau, Philippe Blanchard, Simon Richir

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Introduction:The widespread availability of artificial intelligence, exemplified by Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT) relying on large language models (LLM), has caused a seismic shift in the realm of knowledge. Everyone now has the capacity to swiftly learn how these models can either serve them well or not. Today, conversational AI like ChatGPT is grounded in neural transformer models, a significant advance in natural language processing facilitated by the emergence of renowned LLMs constructed using neural transformer architecture. Inventiveness of an LLM : OpenAI's GPT-3 stands as a premier LLM, capable of handling a broad spectrum of natural language processing tasks without requiring fine-tuning, reliably producing text that reads as if authored by humans. However, even with an understanding of how LLMs respond to questions asked, there may be lurking behind OpenAI’s seemingly endless responses an inventive model yet to be uncovered. There may be some unforeseen reasoning emerging from the interconnection of neural networks here. Just as a Soviet researcher in the 1940s questioned the existence of Common factors in inventions, enabling an Under standing of how and according to what principles humans create them, it is equally legitimate today to explore whether solutions provided by LLMs to complex problems also share common denominators. Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) : We will revisit some fundamentals of TRIZ and how Genrich ALTSHULLER was inspired by the idea that inventions and innovations are essential means to solve societal problems. It's crucial to note that traditional problem-solving methods often fall short in discovering innovative solutions. The design team is frequently hampered by psychological barriers stemming from confinement within a highly specialized knowledge domain that is difficult to question. We presume ChatGPT Utilizes TRIZ 40. Hence, the objective of this research is to decipher the inventive model of LLMs, particularly that of ChatGPT, through a comparative study. This will enhance the efficiency of sustainable innovation processes and shed light on how the construction of a solution to a complex problem was devised. Description of the Experimental Protocol : To confirm or reject our main hypothesis that is to determine whether ChatGPT uses TRIZ, we will follow a stringent protocol that we will detail, drawing on insights from a panel of two TRIZ experts. Conclusion and Future Directions : In this endeavor, we sought to comprehend how an LLM like GPT addresses complex challenges. Our goal was to analyze the inventive model of responses provided by an LLM, specifically ChatGPT, by comparing it to an existing standard model: TRIZ 40. Of course, problem solving is our main focus in our endeavours.

Keywords: artificial intelligence, Triz, ChatGPT, inventiveness, problem-solving

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Authors: Albert T. Akume, Ankama G. Rosecana, Micheal Solomon

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Every citizen has rights that must be respected by others in the community. Ironically however, women in most communities are not accorded some of those rights as the male folks. This has not only facilitated their disempowerment but inhibited them from being treated with equal dignity that they deserve as their male counterpart; despite their valuable contribution to the society. Those forces against women empowerment are not limited to socio-cultural practices alone, but the character and nature of the state in Nigeria point to indicators of systemic and structural exclusion embedded in its framework. The consequence of this is that the vital contributions of women to sustainable community development have eluded many communities in Nigeria with adverse tell-tell signs on the environment. It is for this reason that the objective of this study is not only to highlight the causes and challenges associated with women disempowerment, but also to draw attention to the need to correct those anomaly against women in order to genuinely empower them to contribute to sustainable community development in Nigeria.

Keywords: capacity development, community, social sustainability, sustainable development, women empowerment

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Authors: Md Tasbirul Islam, Pablo Dias, Nazmul Huda

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E-waste/Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is one of the fastest growing waste streams across the globe. This paper aims to compare the e-waste management system in Switzerland and Australia in terms of four features - legislative initiatives, disposal practice, collection and financial mechanisms. The qualitative content analysis is employed as a research method in the study. Data were collected from various published academic research papers, industry reports, and web sources. In addition, a questionnaire survey is conducted in Australia to understand the public awareness and opinions on the features. The results of the study provide valuable insights to policymakers in Australia developing better e-waste management system in conjunction with the public consensus, and the state-of-the-art operational strategies currently being practiced in Switzerland.

Keywords: E-waste management, WEEE, awareness, pro-environmental behavior, Australia, Switzerland

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Authors: Anu Malhotra, Rahul Malhotra

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This review paper is focused on achievement ability analysis of perspective teachers and students of technical education of Haryana. It is well known that women have higher verbal achievement, while men have higher achievement in non-verbal and scientific achievement. Chi-square analyses were performed to evaluate the effect of information and communication technology tools on the scientific, verbal and non-verbal achievement of the controlled and uncontrolled group of 204 students of Haryana. The computed value of expected count, which is more than 5, shows that there is a significant improvement in achievement ability of students of the controlled group when compared to the uncontrolled group. The research analyzes that the Information and communication technology tools play an important role in enhancing student’s achievement.

Keywords: achievement, ICT, perspective teacher, verbal achievement

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Authors: Andrea Bellucci, Martina Tofi

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The aim of paper is to analyze business models of bancassurance in Italy for life business. The life insurance business is very developed in the Italian market and banks branches have 80% of the market share. Given its maturity, the life insurance market needs to consolidate its organizational form to allow for the development of non-life business, which nowadays collects few premiums but represents a great opportunity to enlarge the market share of bancassurance using its strength in the distribution channel while the market share of independent agents is decreasing. Starting with the main business model of bancassurance for life business, this paper will analyze the performances of life companies in the Italian market by balance sheet indicators and by main discriminant variables of business models. The study will observe trends from 2013 to 2015 for the Italian market by exploiting a database managed by Associazione Nazionale delle Imprese di Assicurazione (ANIA). The applied approach is based on a bottom-up analysis starting with variables and indicators to define business models’ classification. The statistical classification algorithm proposed by Ward is employed to design business models’ profiles. Results from the analysis will be a representation of the main business models built by their profile related to indicators. In that way, an unsupervised analysis is developed that has the limit of its judgmental dimension based on research opinion, but it is possible to obtain a design of effective business models.

Keywords: bancassurance, business model, non life bancassurance, insurance business value drivers

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Authors: Pooja Verma, Sumana Ghosh

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There is a growing need for alternative way of power generation worldwide. The reason can be attributed to limited resources of fossil fuels, environmental pollution, increasing cost of conventional fuels, and lower efficiency of conversion of energy in existing systems. In this context, one of the potential alternatives for power generation is wave energy. However, it is difficult to estimate the amount of electrical energy generation in an irregular sea condition by experiment and or analytical methods. Therefore in this work, a numerical wave tank is developed using the computational fluid dynamics software Open FOAM. In this software a specific utility known as waves2Foam utility is being used to carry out the simulation work. The computational domain is a tank of dimension: 5m*1.5m*1m with a floating object of dimension: 0.5m*0.2m*0.2m. Regular waves are generated at the inlet of the wave tank according to Stokes second order theory. The main objective of the present study is to validate the numerical model against existing experimental data. It shows a good matching with the existing experimental data of floater displacement. Later the model is exploited to estimate energy extraction due to the movement of such a point absorber in real sea conditions. Scale down the wave properties like wave height, wave length, etc. are used as input parameters. Seasonal variations are also considered.

Keywords: OpenFOAM, numerical wave tank, regular waves, floating object, point absorber

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Authors: Whitehead-Clarke T., Beynon V., Banks J., Karanjia R., Mudera V., Windsor A., Kureshi A.

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Introduction: Mesh implants are regularly used to help repair both hiatus hernias (HH) and diaphragmatic hernias (DH). In vivo studies are used to test not only mesh safety but increasingly comparative efficacy. Our work examines the field of in vivo mesh testing for HH and DH models to establish current practices and standards. Method: This systematic review was registered with PROSPERO. Medline and Embase databases were searched for relevant in vivo studies. 44 articles were identified and underwent abstract review, where 22 were excluded. 4 further studies were excluded after full text review – leaving 18 to undergo data extraction. Results: Of 18 studies identified, 9 used an in vivo HH model and 9 a DH model. 5 studies undertook mechanical testing on tissue samples – all uniaxial in nature. Testing strip widths ranged from 1-20mm (median 3mm). Testing speeds varied from 1.5-60mm/minute. Upon histology, the most commonly assessed structural and cellular factors were neovascularization and macrophages, respectively (n=9 each). Structural analysis was mostly qualitative, where cellular analysis was equally likely to be quantitative. 11 studies assessed adhesion formation, of which 8 used one of four scoring systems. 8 studies measured mesh shrinkage. Discussion: In vivo studies assessing mesh for HH and DH repair are uncommon. Within this relatively young field, we encourage surgical and materials testing institutions to discuss its standardisation.

Keywords: hiatus, diaphragmatic, hernia, mesh, materials testing, in vivo

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Authors: Tzai-Shiung Li, Wen-Bin Young

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The wind turbine blade sustains various kinds of loadings during the operating and parking state. Due to the increasing size of the wind turbine blade, it is important to arrange the composite materials in a sufficient way to reach the optimal utilization of the material strength. In the fabrication process of the vacuum assisted resin transfer molding, the fiber content of the turbine blade depends on the vacuum pressure. In this study, a design of the fiber layup for the vacuum assisted resin transfer molding is conducted to achieve the efficient utilization the material strength. This design is for the wind turbine blade consisting of shell skins with or without the spar structure.

Keywords: resin film infiltration, vacuum assisted resin transfer molding process, wind turbine blade, composite materials

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Authors: Mustafa Mutahari, Nao Sugiki, Kojiro Matsuo

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The four decades of war, lack of job opportunities, poverty, lack of services, and natural disasters in different provinces of Afghanistan have contributed to a rapid increase in the population of Kabul, the capital city of Afghanistan. Population census has not been conducted since 1979, the first and last population census in Afghanistan. However, according to population estimations by Afghan authorities, the population of Kabul has been estimated at more than 4 million people, whereas the city was designed for two million people. Although the major transport mode of Kabul residents is public transport, responsible authorities within the country failed to supply the required means of transportation systems for the city. Besides, informal resettlement, lack of intersection control devices, presence of illegal vendors on streets, presence of illegal and unstandardized on-street parking and bus stops, driver`s unprofessional behavior, weak traffic law enforcement, and blocked roads and sidewalks have contributed to the extreme traffic congestion of Kabul. In 2018, the government of Afghanistan approved the Kabul city Urban Design Framework (KUDF), a vision towards the future of Kabul, which provides strategies and design guidance at different scales to direct urban development. Considering traffic congestion of the city and its budget limitations, the KUDF proposes a BRT route network with seven lines to reduce the traffic congestion, and it is said to facilitate more than 50% of Kabul population to benefit from this service. Based on the KUDF, it is planned to increase the BRT mode share from 0% to 17% and later to 30% in medium and long-term planning scenarios, respectively. Therefore, a detailed research study is needed to evaluate the proposed system before the implementation stage starts. The integrated land-use transport model is an effective tool to evaluate the Kabul BRT because of its future assessment capabilities that take into account the interaction between land use and transportation. This research aims to analyze and evaluate the proposed BRT route network with the application of an integrated land-use and transportation model. The research estimates the population distribution and travel behavior of Kabul within small boundary scales. The actual road network and land-use detailed data of the city are used to perform the analysis. The BRT corridors are evaluated not only considering its impacts on the spatial interactions in the city`s transportation system but also on the spatial developments. Therefore, the BRT are evaluated with the scenarios of improving the Kabul transportation system based on the distribution of land-use or spatial developments, planned development typology and population distribution of the city. The impacts of the new improved transport system on the BRT network are analyzed and the BRT network is evaluated accordingly. In addition, the research also focuses on the spatial accessibility of BRT stops, corridors, and BRT line beneficiaries, and each BRT stop and corridor are evaluated in terms of both access and geographic coverage, as well.

Keywords: accessibility, BRT, integrated land-use and transport model, travel behavior, spatial development

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Authors: Lei Wang, Jiahao Zhou

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The development of heterogeneous computing clusters provides a strong computility guarantee for large-scale workflows (e.g., scientific computing, artificial intelligence (AI), etc.). However, the tasks within large-scale workflows have also gradually become heterogeneous due to different demands on computing resources, which leads to the addition of a task resource-restricted constraint to the workflow scheduling problem on heterogeneous computing platform. In this paper, we propose a heterogeneous constrained minimum makespan scheduling algorithm based on the idea of greedy strategy, which provides an efficient solution to the heterogeneous workflow scheduling problem in a heterogeneous platform. In this paper, we test the effectiveness of our proposed scheduling algorithm by randomly generating heterogeneous workflows with heterogeneous computing platform, and the experiments show that our method improves 15.2% over the state-of-the-art methods.

Keywords: heterogeneous computing, workflow scheduling, constrained resources, minimal makespan

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Authors: Liz Jackson

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Fear is usually considered as a basic emotion. In society, it is normally cast as undesirable, but also as partly unavoidable. Fear can be said to underlie courage or be required for courage, or it can be understood as its foil. Fear is not normally promoted (intentionally) in education, or treated as something that should be cultivated in schools or in society. However, fear is a basic, to some extent unavoidable emotion, related to truly fearsome things in the world. Fear is also understood to underlie anxiety. Fear is seen as basically disruptive to education, while from a psychological view it is an ordinary state. that cannot be avoided altogether. Despite calls to diminish this negative and mixed feeling in education and society, it can be regarded as socially and personally valuable, and psychologically functional in some situations. One should not take for granted the goodness of fear. However, it can be productive to explore its moral worth, and uses and abuses. Such uncomfortable feelings and experiences can be cultivated and explored via educational and other societal influences, in ways that can benefit a person and their relations with others in the world, while they can also be detrimental.

Keywords: virtue ethics, philosophy of education, moral philosophy, fear

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Authors: Shelly-Ann Gajadhar

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Over the last twenty years, the traditional economic motivations of foreign direct investment have been amalgamated with geopolitical motivations. This is evidenced by the extensive ratification of bilateral investment treaties (BIT) globally and the emergence of state-owned multinational companies (SOMNCs) that directly compete with local domestic enterprises (LDE). This paper investigates the impact that Chinese SOMNCs have on LDEs within Trinidad and Tobago’s construction sector and, determines whether knowledge transfer occurs. The paper employed semi-structured interviews of industry experts and concluded that LDEs predominantly experience adverse spillovers, inclusive of a long-term competition effect, with no technology transfer occurring.

Keywords: foreign direct investment, bilateral investment treaties, knowledge transfer, international business, Caribbean

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Authors: Diego Aguirre, Olac Fuentes

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In this paper, we present a taxonomy of weight initialization schemes used in deep learning. We survey the most representative techniques in each class and compare them in terms of overhead cost, convergence rate, and applicability. We also introduce a new weight initialization scheme. In this technique, we perform an initial feedforward pass through the network using an initialization mini-batch. Using statistics obtained from this pass, we initialize the weights of the network, so the following properties are met: 1) weight matrices are orthogonal; 2) ReLU layers produce a predetermined number of non-zero activations; 3) the output produced by each internal layer has a unit variance; 4) weights in the last layer are chosen to minimize the error in the initial mini-batch. We evaluate our method on three popular architectures, and a faster converge rates are achieved on the MNIST, CIFAR-10/100, and ImageNet datasets when compared to state-of-the-art initialization techniques.

Keywords: deep learning, image classification, supervised learning, weight initialization

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Authors: Iyabosola B. Oronti, Adeoluwawale A. Adewusi, Olubusola O. Nuga

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Sub-Saharan Africa has long been known to be a region rife with poverty, inadequate health facilities, food shortages, high transport and communication costs and very low pace of infrastructural and technological development. These factors combined have led to decades of resource paucity in engineering education. Engineering is core to global development and building of capacity in engineering education with available resources in sub-Saharan Africa has become imperative. This paper identifies core political issues and policy shifts contributing adversely to this present state of affairs, and also explores the offshoots of the changing global political environment as it affects engineering education in the developing nations of sub-Saharan Africa. Opportunities for instituting resource sufficiency are examined and corrective measures that can be taken to resuscitate and stabilize the educational sector in the region are also suggested.

Keywords: capacity building, engineering education, resource sufficiency, sub-Saharan Africa

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Authors: Nia Kurniati, Efa Laela Fakhriah

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The regulation in Indonesia provides space for the land dispute to be settled outside the court by the government through National Land. In this case, the bureaucrat of Badan Pertanahan Nasional (BPN) acts as mediator to reach a fair agreement between the disputing parties. Land dispute is from a party who denies the ownership of the other party of a land and denies legal-technical facts written on land certificate published by BPN. Appointing the bureaucrat of BPN as mediator in dispute settlements may possibly create conflict of interest since the object. It has become a concern since bureaucrat of BPN acts as mediator, he will be bias and partial in assisting the dispute settlement, thus the spirit and purposes of mediation will be hampered. This issue triggers to be thoroughly examined further in a relation with the role and function of BPN as land dispute mediator. The methodology used in this research is a normative-legal one with qualitative-legal analytical method. The object of this research is in the form of random sampling of land dispute cases being occurred in some areas. Several principles in mediation have to be made as the base of the consideration to appoint bureaucrat of BPN as mediator since the mediator is an impartial third party, working with both disputing parties and assisting them to reach a fair resolution written in agreement as a foundation of land dispute settlement. The existence of BPN as mediator in land dispute settlement encounters conflict of interest which uphold legal uncertainty to act objectively.

Keywords: Indonesia, land dispute, mediator, national land authority

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Authors: A. Ribeiro, N. Pacheco, M. Soares, N. Valério, L. Nascimento, A. Silva, C. Vilarinho, J. Carvalho

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Hydrogen will play a key role in changing the current global energy paradigm, associated with the high use of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gases. This work intended to identify and quantify the potential of Solid Recovered Fuels (SFR) existing in Portugal and project the cost of hydrogen, produced through its steam gasification in different scenarios, associated with the size or capacity of the plant and the existence of carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems. Therefore, it was performed a techno-economic analysis simulation using an ASPEN base model, the H2A Hydrogen Production Model Version 3.2018. Regarding the production of SRF, it was possible to verify the annual production of more than 200 thousand tons of SRF in Portugal in 2019. The results of the techno-economic analysis simulations showed that in the scenarios containing a high (200,000 tons/year) and medium (40,000 tons/year) amount of SFR, the cost of hydrogen production was competitive concerning the current prices of hydrogen. The results indicate that scenarios 1 and 2, which use 200,000 tons of SRF per year, have lower hydrogen production values, 1.22 USD/kg H2 and 1.63 USD/kg H2, respectively. The cost of producing hydrogen without carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems in an average amount of SFR (40,000 tons/year) was 1.70 USD/kg H2. In turn, scenarios 5 (without CCS) and 6 (with CCS), which use only 683 tons of SFR from urban sources, have the highest costs, 6.54 USD/kg H2 and 908.97 USD/kg H2, respectively. Therefore, it was possible to conclude that there is a huge potential for the use of SRF for the production of hydrogen through steam gasification in Portugal.

Keywords: gasification, hydrogen, solid recovered fuels, techno-economic analysis, waste-to-energy

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Authors: Papon Thamvasupong, Kwanchanok Viravaidya-Pasuwat

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Osteoarthritis affects a lot of people worldwide. Local injection of glucosamine is one of the alternative treatment methods to replenish the natural lubrication of cartilage. However, multiple injections can potentially lead to possible bacterial infection. Therefore, a drug delivery system is desired to reduce the frequencies of injections. A hydrogel is one of the delivery systems that can control the release of drugs. Thermo-reversible hydrogels can be beneficial to the drug delivery system especially in the local injection route because this formulation can change from liquid to gel after getting into human body. Once the gel is in the body, it will slowly release the drug in a controlled manner. In this study, various formulations of Pluronic-based hydrogels were synthesized for the controlled release of glucosamine. One of the challenges of the Pluronic controlled release system is its fast dissolution rate. To overcome this problem, alginate and calcium sulfate (CaSO₄) were added to the polymer solution. The characteristics of the hydrogels were investigated including the gelation temperature, gelation time, hydrogel dissolution and glucosamine release mechanism. Finally, a mathematical model of glucosamine release from Pluronic-alginate-hyaluronic acid hydrogel was developed. Our results have shown that crosslinking Pluronic gel with alginate did not significantly extend the dissolution rate of the gel. Moreover, the gel dissolution profiles and the glucosamine release mechanisms were best described using the zeroth-order kinetic model, indicating that the release of glucosamine was primarily governed by the gel dissolution.

Keywords: controlled release, drug delivery system, glucosamine, pluronic, thermoreversible hydrogel

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Authors: Chung-Chih Lin, Wen-Teng Wang, Chin-Chiuan Kuo, Chieh-Liang Wu

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The state of melt viscosity in injection process is significantly influenced by the setting parameters due to that the shear rate of injection process is higher than other processes. How to determine plastic melt viscosity during injection process is important to understand the influence of setting parameters on the melt viscosity. An apparatus named as pressure sensor bushing (PSB) module that is used to evaluate the melt viscosity during injection process is developed in this work. The formulations to coupling melt viscosity with fill time and injection pressure are derived and then the melt viscosity is determined. A test mold is prepared to evaluate the accuracy on viscosity calculations between the PSB module and the conventional approaches. The influence of melt viscosity on the tensile strength of molded part is proposed to study the consistency of injection quality.

Keywords: injection molding, melt viscosity, tensile test, pressure sensor bushing (PSB)

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Authors: Kyung Bae Park, Sung Ho Ha

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Online user-generated contents (UGC) significantly change the way customers behave (e.g., shop, travel), and a pressing need to handle the overwhelmingly plethora amount of various UGC is one of the paramount issues for management. However, a current approach (e.g., sentiment analysis) is often ineffective for leveraging textual information to detect the problems or issues that a certain management suffers from. In this paper, we employ text mining of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) on a popular online review site dedicated to complaint from users. We find that the employed LDA efficiently detects customer complaints, and a further inspection with the visualization technique is effective to categorize the problems or issues. As such, management can identify the issues at stake and prioritize them accordingly in a timely manner given the limited amount of resources. The findings provide managerial insights into how analytics on social media can help maintain and improve their reputation management. Our interdisciplinary approach also highlights several insights by applying machine learning techniques in marketing research domain. On a broader technical note, this paper illustrates the details of how to implement LDA in R program from a beginning (data collection in R) to an end (LDA analysis in R) since the instruction is still largely undocumented. In this regard, it will help lower the boundary for interdisciplinary researcher to conduct related research.

Keywords: latent dirichlet allocation, R program, text mining, topic model, user generated contents, visualization

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Authors: Jean-Philippe Amat, Timothée Vergne, Aymeric Hans, Bénédicte Ferry, Pascal Hendrikx, Jackie Tapprest, Barbara Dufour, Agnès Leblond

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The surveillance of infectious diseases is necessary to describe their occurrence and help the planning, implementation and evaluation of risk mitigation activities. However, the exact number of detected cases may remain unknown whether surveillance is based on serological tests because identifying seroconversion may be difficult. Moreover, incomplete detection of cases or outbreaks is a recurrent issue in the field of disease surveillance. This study addresses these two issues. Using a viral animal disease as an example (equine viral arteritis), the goals were to establish suitable rules for identifying seroconversion in order to estimate the number of cases and outbreaks detected by a surveillance system in France between 2006 and 2013, and to assess the sensitivity of this system by estimating the total number of outbreaks that occurred during this period (including unreported outbreaks) using a capture-recapture model. Data from horses which exhibited at least one positive result in serology using viral neutralization test between 2006 and 2013 were used for analysis (n=1,645). Data consisted of the annual antibody titers and the location of the subjects (towns). A consensus among multidisciplinary experts (specialists in the disease and its laboratory diagnosis, epidemiologists) was reached to consider seroconversion as a change in antibody titer from negative to at least 32 or as a three-fold or greater increase. The number of seroconversions was counted for each town and modeled using a unilist zero-truncated binomial (ZTB) capture-recapture model with R software. The binomial denominator was the number of horses tested in each infected town. Using the defined rules, 239 cases located in 177 towns (outbreaks) were identified from 2006 to 2013. Subsequently, the sensitivity of the surveillance system was estimated as the ratio of the number of detected outbreaks to the total number of outbreaks that occurred (including unreported outbreaks) estimated using the ZTB model. The total number of outbreaks was estimated at 215 (95% credible interval CrI95%: 195-249) and the surveillance sensitivity at 82% (CrI95%: 71-91). The rules proposed for identifying seroconversion may serve future research. Such rules, adjusted to the local environment, could conceivably be applied in other countries with surveillance programs dedicated to this disease. More generally, defining ad hoc algorithms for interpreting the antibody titer could be useful regarding other human and animal diseases and zoonosis when there is a lack of accurate information in the literature about the serological response in naturally infected subjects. This study shows how capture-recapture methods may help to estimate the sensitivity of an imperfect surveillance system and to valorize surveillance data. The sensitivity of the surveillance system of equine viral arteritis is relatively high and supports its relevance to prevent the disease spreading.

Keywords: Bayesian inference, capture-recapture, epidemiology, equine viral arteritis, infectious disease, seroconversion, surveillance

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Authors: Olga Yu Kurapova, Alexander V. Shorokhov, Vladimir G. Konakov

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Nowadays, due to their exceptional anion conductivity at high temperatures cubic zirconia solid solutions, stabilized by rare-earth and alkaline-earth metal oxides, are widely used as a solid electrolyte (SE) materials in different electrochemical devices such as gas sensors, oxygen pumps, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC), etc. Nowadays the intensive studies are carried out in a field of novel fully stabilized zirconia based SE development. The use of precursor powders for SE manufacturing allows predetermining the microstructure, electrical and sensor characteristics of zirconia based ceramics used as SE. Thus the goal of the present work was the investigation of the effect of precursor powder size on the electrical and sensor characteristics of fully stabilized zirconia-based solid electrolytes with compositions of 0,08Y2O3∙0,92ZrO2 (YSZ), 0,06Ce2O3∙ 0,06Y2O3∙0,88ZrO2 and 0,09Ce2O3∙0,06Y2O3-0,85ZrO2. The synthesis of precursors powders with different mean particle size was performed by sol-gel synthesis in the form of reversed co-precipitation from aqueous solutions. The cakes were washed until the neutral pH and pan-dried at 110 °С. Also, YSZ ceramics was obtained by conventional solid state synthesis including milling into a planetary mill. Then the powder was cold pressed into the pellets with a diameter of 7.2 and ~4 mm thickness at P ~16 kg/cm2 and then hydrostatically pressed. The pellets were annealed at 1600 °С for 2 hours. The phase composition of as-synthesized SE was investigated by X-Ray photoelectron spectroscopy ESCA (spectrometer ESCA-5400, PHI) X-ray diffraction analysis - XRD (Shimadzu XRD-6000). Following galvanic cell О2 (РО2(1)), Pt | SE | Pt, (РО2(2) = 0.21 atm) was used for SE sensor properties investigation. The value of РО2(1) was set by mixing of O2 and N2 in the defined proportions with the accuracy of  5%. The temperature was measured by Pt/Pt-10% Rh thermocouple, The cell electromotive force (EMF) measurement was carried out with ± 0.1 mV accuracy. During the operation at the constant temperature, reproducibility was better than 5 mV. Asymmetric potential measured for all SE appeared to be negligible. It was shown that the resistivity of YSZ ceramics decreases in about two times upon the mean agglomerates decrease from 200-250 to 40 nm. It is likely due to the both surface and bulk resistivity decrease in grains. So the overall decrease of grain size in ceramic SE results in the significant decrease of the total ceramics resistivity allowing sensor operation at lower temperatures. For the SE manufactured the estimation of oxygen ion transfer number tion was carried out in the range 600-800 °С. YSZ ceramics manufactured from powders with the mean particle size 40-140 nm, shows the highest values i.e. 0.97-0.98. SE manufactured from precursors with the mean particle size 40-140 nm shows higher sensor characteristic i.e. temperature and oxygen concentration EMF dependencies, EMF (ENernst - Ereal), tion, response time, then ceramics, manufactured by conventional solid state synthesis.

Keywords: oxygen sensors, precursor powders, sol-gel synthesis, stabilized zirconia ceramics

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