Search results for: voluntary work

Authors: Joan Casas-Roma

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Technology has become one of the main channels through which people engage in most of their everyday activities; from working to learning, or even when socializing, technology often acts as both an enabler and a mediator of such activities. Moreover, the affordances and interactions created by those technological tools determine the way in which the users interact with one another, as well as how they relate to the relevant environment, thus favoring certain kinds of actions and behaviors while discouraging others. In this regard, virtue ethics theories place a strong focus on a person's daily practice (understood as their decisions, actions, and behaviors) as the means to develop and enhance their habits and ethical competences --such as their awareness and sensitivity towards certain ethically-desirable principles. Under this understanding of ethics, this set of technologically-enabled affordances and interactions can be seen as the possibility space where the daily practice of their users takes place in a wide plethora of contexts and situations. At this point, the following question pops into mind: could these affordances and interactions be shaped in a way that would promote behaviors and habits basedonethically-desirable principles into their users? In the field of game design, the MDA framework (which stands for Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics) explores how the interactions enabled within the possibility space of a game can lead to creating certain experiences and provoking specific reactions to the players. In this sense, these interactions can be shaped in ways thatcreate experiences to raise the players' awareness and sensitivity towards certain topics or principles. This research brings together the notions of technological affordances, the notions of practice and practical wisdom from virtue ethics, and the MDA framework from game design in order to explore how the possibility space created by technological interactions can be shaped in ways that enable and promote actions and behaviors supporting certain ethically-desirable principles. When shaped accordingly, interactions supporting certain ethically-desirable principlescould allow their users to carry out the kind of practice that, according to virtue ethics theories, provides the grounds to develop and enhance their awareness, sensitivity, and ethical reasoning capabilities. Moreover, and because ethical practice can happen collaterally in almost every context, decision, and action, this additional layer could potentially be applied in a wide variety of technological tools, contexts, and functionalities. This work explores the theoretical background, as well as the initial considerations and steps that would be needed in order to harness the potential ethically-desirable benefits that technology can bring, once it is understood as the space where most of their users' daily practice takes place.

Keywords: ethics, design methodology, human-computer interaction, philosophy of technology

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Authors: Chong Jiang, Liang Zhao, Hua Jian, Xiaoguang Wang

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The belief that there is a strong relationship between reading narrative and morality has generally become the basic assumption of scholars, philosophers, critics, and cultural critics. The virtuality constructed by literary novels inspires readers to regard the narrative as a thinking experiment, creating the distance between readers and events so that they can freely and morally experience the positions of different roles. Therefore, the virtual narrative combined with literary characteristics is always considered as a "moral laboratory." Well-established findings revealed that people show less lying and deceptive behaviors in the morning than in the afternoon, called the morning morality effect. As a limited self-regulation resource, morality will be constantly depleted with the change of time rhythm under the influence of the morning morality effect. It can also be compensated and restored in various ways, such as eating, sleeping, etc. As a common form of entertainment in modern society, literary novel reading gives people more virtual experience and emotional catharsis, just as a relaxing afternoon tea that helps people break away from fast-paced work, restore physical strength, and relieve stress in a short period of leisure. In this paper, inspired by the compensation control theory, we wonder whether reading literary novels in the digital environment could replenish a kind of spiritual energy for self-regulation to compensate for people's moral loss in the afternoon. Based on this assumption, we leverage the social annotation text content generated by readers in digital reading to represent the readers' reading attention. We then recognized the semantics and calculated the readers' moral motivation expressed in the annotations and investigated the fine-grained dynamics of the moral motivation changing in each time slot within 24 hours of a day. Comprehensively comparing the division of different time intervals, sufficient experiments showed that the moral motivation reflected in the annotations in the afternoon is significantly higher than that in the morning. The results robustly verified the hypothesis that reading compensates for moral motivation, which we called the moral afternoon tea effect. Moreover, we quantitatively identified that such moral compensation can last until 14:00 in the afternoon and 21:00 in the evening. In addition, it is interesting to find that the division of time intervals of different units impacts the identification of moral rhythms. Dividing the time intervals by four-hour time slot brings more insights of moral rhythms compared with that of three-hour and six-hour time slot.

Keywords: digital reading, social annotation, moral motivation, morning morality effect, control compensation

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Authors: Rahab Kisio

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The persistent underrepresentation of female miltary in United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions remains a critical concern for addressing the multifaceted challenges in conflict-affected regions. This research explores the factors influencing countries’ decisions to deploy female military troops to UN peacekeeping operations, examining data ranging from 2010 to 2020. The study highlights the urgent need for policymakers and international organizations to recognize gender equality as key instrument in dealing with sexual exploitation and abuse within these missions. The study suggests three reasons for the low female military troops deployment. Firstly, countries actively breaking down barriers for women in the workforce are more likely to send female military troops. Secondly, nations supporting women in politics are more likely to deploy female military troops, showing their value for gender equality. Lastly, countries with a history of conflict may send more female military troops to align with the UN's call and potentially gain international support in future conflicts. Theoretical approaches are presented to explore these motivations further, and the study uses negative binomial regression with country-year as the unit of analysis to test various explanations for a country's contribution of female military troops to UN peacekeeping missions. Findings shows that there is a connection between troop contributing countries’ gender equality and the participation of female military troops in peacekeeping operations. Nations that prioritize gender equality and empower women have a higher likelihood of deploying more female military personnel. The study emphasizes the significance of women in political leadership, indicating that countries actively addressing barriers to women's political representation are more willing to contribute higher numbers of female military troops to peacekeeping missions. While the research supports hypotheses related to gender equality and political representation, it finds no significant evidence that a country's history of conflict directly influences the deployment of female military troops in other conflict-ridden nations. This research contributes valuable insights into gender equality within peacekeeping forces, shedding light on factors influencing the deployment of female military personnel. The implications underscore the importance of actively addressing discrimination, promoting women's political participation, and understanding the influence of a nation's conflict history. The interdisciplinary nature of this work calls for collaborative efforts from policymakers, international organization, and researchers to formulate strategies for effectively increasing female military troops participation in UN peacekeeping

Keywords: UN peacekeeping, gender diversity, female military troops, discrimination

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Authors: Ekaterina G. Lipatova

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The developing potential of a video task in teaching foreign languages involves the opportunities to improve four aspects of speech production process: listening, reading, speaking and writing. A video represents the sequence of actions, realized in the pictures logically connected and verbalized speech flow that simplifies and stimulates the process of perception. In this connection listening skills of students are developed effectively as well as their intellectual properties such as synthesizing, analyzing and generalizing the information. In terms of teaching capacity, a video task, in our opinion, is more stimulating than a traditional listening, since it involves the student into the plot of the communicative situation, emotional background and potentially makes them react to the gist in the cognitive and communicative ways. To be an effective method of teaching the video task should be structured in the way of psycho-linguistic characteristics of speech production process, in other words, should include three phases: before-watching, while-watching and after-watching. The system of tasks provided to each phase might involve the situations on reflecting to the video content in the forms of filling-the-gap tasks, multiple choice, True-or-False tasks (reading skills), exercises on expressing the opinion, project fulfilling (writing and speaking skills). In the before-watching phase we offer the students to adjust their perception mechanism to the topic and the problem of the chosen video by such task as “what do you know about such a problem?”, “is it new for you?”, “have you ever faced the situation of…?”. Then we proceed with the lexical and grammatical analysis of language units that form the body of a speech sample to lessen the perception and develop the student’s lexicon. The goal of while-watching phase is to build the student’s awareness about the problem presented in the video and challenge their inner attitude towards what they have seen by identifying the mistakes in the statements about the video content or making the summary, justifying their understanding. Finally, we move on to development of their speech skills within the communicative situation they observed and learnt by stimulating them to search the similar ideas in their backgrounds and represent them orally or in the written form or express their own opinion on the problem. It is compulsory to highlight, that a video task should contain the urgent, valid and interesting event related to the future profession of the student, since it will help to activate cognitive, emotional, verbal and ethic capacity of students. Also, logically structured video tasks are easily integrated into the system of e-learning and can provide the opportunity for the students to work with the foreign language on their own.

Keywords: communicative situation, perception mechanism, speech production process, speech skills

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Authors: Dercan Gencbas, Hatice Bebis, Sue Moorhead

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In the nursing process, many of the nursing classification systems were created to be used in international. From these, NANDA-I, Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) and Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC). In this direction, the main objective of this study is to establish a model for caregivers in hospitals and communities in Turkey and to ensure that nursing outputs are assessed by NOC-based measures. There are many scales to measure Urinary Incontinence (UI), which is very common in children, in old age, vaginal birth, NOC scales are ideal for use in the nursing process for comprehensive and holistic assessment, with surveys available. For this reason, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the validity of the NOC outputs and indicators used for UI NANDA-I. This research is a methodological study. In addition to the validity of scale indicators in the study, how much they will contribute to recovery after the nursing intervention was assessed by experts. Scope validations have been applied and calculated according to Fehring 1987 work model. According to this, nursing inclusion criteria and scores were determined. For example, if experts have at least four years of clinical experience, their score was 4 points or have at least one year of the nursing classification system, their score was 1 point. The experts were a publication experience about nursing classification, their score was 1 point, or have a doctoral degree in nursing, their score was 2 points. If the expert has a master degree, their score was 1 point. Total of 55 experts rated Fehring as a “senior degree” with a score of 90 according to the expert scoring. The nursing interventions to be applied were asked to what extent these indicators would contribute to recovery. For coverage validity tailored to Fehring's model, each NOC and NOC indicator from specialists was asked to score between 1-5. Score for the significance of indicators was from 1=no precaution to 5=very important. After the expert opinion, these weighted scores obtained for each NOC and NOC indicator were classified as 0.8 critical, 0.8 > 0.5 complements, > 0.5 are excluded. In the NANDA-I / NOC / NIC system (guideline), 5 NOCs proposed for nursing diagnoses for UI were proposed. These outputs are; Urinary Continence, Urinary Elimination, Tissue Integrity, Self CareToileting, Medication Response. After the scales are translated into Turkish, the weighted average of the scores obtained from specialists for the coverage of all 5 NOCs and the contribution of nursing initiatives exceeded 0.8. After the opinions of the experts, 79 of the 82 indicators were calculated as critical, 3 of the indicators were calculated as supplemental. Because of 0.5 > was not obtained, no substance was removed. All NOC outputs were identified as valid and usable scales in Turkey. In this study, five NOC outcomes were verified for the evaluation of the output of individuals who have received nursing knowledge of UI and variant types. Nurses in Turkey can benefit from the outputs of the NOC scale to perform the care of the elderly incontinence.

Keywords: nursing outcomes, content validity, nursing diagnosis, urinary incontinence

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Authors: Prashant Neupane, Asmi Pandey, Mumna Ehsan, Katie Davies, Richard Lowsby

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Introduction/Background & aims: Safe and effective prescribing in hospitals, directly and indirectly, impacts the health of the patients. Even though digital prescribing in the National Health Service (NHS), UK has been used in lots of tertiary centers along with district general hospitals, a significant number of NHS trusts are still using paper prescribing. We came across lots of irregularities in our daily clinical practice when we are doing paper prescribing. The main aim of the study was to assess how safely and effectively are we prescribing at our hospital where there is no access to digital prescribing. Method/Summary of work: We conducted a prospective audit in the critical care department at Mid Cheshire Hopsitals NHS Foundation Trust in which 20 prescription charts from different patients were randomly selected over a period of 1 month. We assessed 16 multiple categories from each prescription chart and compared them to the standard trust guidelines on prescription. Results/Discussion: We collected data from 20 different prescription charts. 16 categories were evaluated within each prescription chart. The results showed there was an urgent need for improvement in 8 different sections. In 85% of the prescription chart, all the prescribers who prescribed the medications were not identified. Name, GMC number and signature were absent in the required prescriber identification section of the prescription chart. In 70% of prescription charts, either indication or review date of the antimicrobials was absent. Units of medication were not documented correctly in 65% and the allergic status of the patient was absent in 30% of the charts. The start date of medications was missing and alternations of the medications were not done properly in 35%of charts. The patient's name was not recorded in all desired sections of the chart in 50% of cases and cancellations of the medication were not done properly in 45% of the prescription charts. Conclusion(s): From the audit and data analysis, we assessed the areas in which we needed improvement in prescription writing in the Critical care department. However, during the meetings and conversations with the experts from the pharmacy department, we realized this audit is just a representation of the specialized department of the hospital where access to prescribing is limited to a certain number of prescribers. But if we consider bigger departments of the hospital where patient turnover is much more, the results could be much worse. The findings were discussed in the Critical care MDT meeting where suggestions regarding digital/electronic prescribing were discussed. A poster and presentation regarding safe and effective prescribing were done, awareness poster was prepared and attached alongside every bedside in critical care where it is visible to prescribers. We consider this as a temporary measure to improve the quality of prescribing, however, we strongly believe digital prescribing will help to a greater extent to control weak areas which are seen in paper prescribing.

Keywords: safe prescribing, NHS, digital prescribing, prescription chart

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Authors: Spencer Rutherford, Shadi Saleh

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War and conflict negatively impact all facets of a health system; services cease to function, resources become depleted, and any semblance of governance is lost. Following cessation of conflict, the rebuilding process includes a wide array of international and local actors. During this period, stakeholders must contend with various trade-offs, including balancing sustainable outcomes with immediate health needs, introducing health reform measures while also increasing local capacity, and reconciling external assistance with local legitimacy. Compounding these factors are additional challenges, including coordination amongst stakeholders, the re-occurrence of conflict, and ulterior motives from donors and governments, to name a few. Therefore, the present paper evaluated health system development in three post-conflict countries over a 12-year timeline. Specifically, health policies, health inputs (such infrastructure and human resources), and measures of governance, from the post-conflict periods of Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Mozambique, were assessed against health outputs and other measures. All post-conflict countries experienced similar challenges when rebuilding the health sector, including; division and competition between donors, NGOs, and local institutions; urban and rural health inequalities; and the re-occurrence of conflict. However, countries also employed unique and effective mechanisms for reconstructing their health systems, including; government engagement of the NGO and private sector; integration of competing factions into the same workforce; and collaborative planning for health policy. Based on these findings, best-practice development strategies were determined and compiled into a 12-year framework. Briefly, during the initial stage of the post-conflict period, primary stakeholders should work quickly to draft a national health strategy in collaboration with the government, and focus on managing and coordinating NGOs through performance-based partnership agreements. With this scaffolding in place, the development community can then prioritize the reconstruction of primary health care centers, increasing and retaining health workers, and horizontal integration of immunization services. The final stages should then concentrate on transferring ownership of the health system national institutions, implementing sustainable financing mechanisms, and phasing-out NGO services. Overall, these findings contribute post-conflict health system development by evaluating the process holistically and along a timeline and can be of further use by healthcare managers, policy-makers, and other health professionals.

Keywords: Afghanistan, Cambodia, health system development, health system reconstruction, Mozambique, post-conflict, state-building

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Authors: Evanka Madan, Madhu Puri, Dan Zilberstein, Rohini Muthuswami, Rentala Madhubala

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The extensive interaction between the host and pathogen metabolic networks decidedly shapes the outcome of infection. Utilization of arginine by the host and pathogen is critical for determining the outcome of pathogenic infection. Infections with L. donovani, an intracellular parasite, will lead to an extensive competition of arginine between the host and the parasite donovani infection. One of the major amino acid (AA) sensing signaling pathways in mammalian cells are the mammalian target of rapamycin complex I (mTORC1) pathway. mTORC1, as a sensor of nutrient, controls numerous metabolic pathways. Arginine is critical for mTORC1 activation. SLC38A9 is the arginine sensor for the mTORC1, being activated during arginine sufficiency. L. donovani transport arginine via a high-affinity transporter (LdAAP3) that is rapidly up-regulated by arginine deficiency response (ADR) in intracellular amastigotes. This study, to author’s best knowledge, investigates the interaction between two arginine sensing systems that act in the same compartment, the lysosome. One is important for macrophage defense, and the other is essential for pathogen virulence. We hypothesize that the latter modulates lysosome arginine to prevent host defense response. The work presented here identifies an upstream regulatory role of LdAAP3 in regulating the expression of SLC38A9-mTORC1 pathway, and consequently, their function in L. donovani infected THP-1 cells cultured in 0.1 mM and 1.5 mM arginine. It was found that in physiological levels of arginine (0.1 mM), infecting THP-1 with Leishmania leads to increased levels of SLC38A9 and mTORC1 via an increase in the expression of RagA. However, the reversal was observed with LdAAP3 mutants, reflecting the positive regulatory role of LdAAP3 on the host SLC38A9. At the molecular level, upon infection, mTORC1 and RagA were found to be activated at the surface of phagolysosomes which was found to form a complex with phagolysosomal localized SLC38A9. To reveal the relevance of SLC38A9 under physiological levels of arginine, endogenous SLC38A9 was depleted and a substantial reduction in the expression of host mTORC1, its downstream active substrate, p-P70S6K1 and parasite LdAAP3, was observed, thereby showing that silencing SLC38A9 suppresses ADR. In brief, to author’s best knowledge, these results reveal an upstream regulatory role of LdAAP3 in manipulating SLC38A9 arginine sensing in host macrophages. Our study indicates that intra-macrophage survival of L. donovani depends on the availability and transport of extracellular arginine. An understanding of the sensing pathway of both parasite and host will open a new perspective on the molecular mechanism of host-parasite interaction and consequently, as a treatment for Leishmaniasis.

Keywords: arginine sensing, LdAAP3, L. donovani, mTORC1, SLC38A9, THP-1

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Authors: M. S. Stepanova, V. V. Zakharov, P. D. Khavlyuk, I. D. Skurlov, A. Y. Dubovik, A. L. Rogach

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Carbon dots are small carbon-based spherical nanoparticles, which are typically less than 10 nm in size that can be modified with surface passivation and heteroatoms doping. The light-absorbing ability of carbon dots has attracted a significant amount of attention in photoluminescence for bioimaging and fluorescence sensing applications owing to their advantages, such as tunable fluorescence emission, photo- and thermostability and low toxicity. In this study, carbon dots were synthesized by the solvothermal method from citric acid and ethylenediamine dissolved in water. The solution was heated for 5 hours at 200°C and then cooled down to room temperature. The carbon dots films were obtained by evaporation from a high-concentration aqueous solution. The increase of both luminescence intensity and light transmission was obtained as a result of a 405 nm laser exposure to a part of the carbon dots film, which was detected using a confocal laser scanning microscope (LSM 710, Zeiss). Blueshift up to 35 nm of the luminescence spectrum is observed as luminescence intensity, which is increased more than twofold. The exact value of the shift depends on the time of the laser exposure. This shift can be caused by the modification of surface groups at the carbon dots, which are responsible for long-wavelength luminescence. In addition, a shift of the absorption peak by 10 nm and a decrease in the optical density at the wavelength of 350 nm is detected, which is responsible for the absorption of surface groups. The obtained sample was also studied with time-resolved confocal fluorescence microscope (MicroTime 100, PicoQuant), which made it possible to receive a time-resolved photoluminescence image and construct emission decays of the laser-exposed and non-exposed areas. 5 MHz pulse rate impulse laser has been used as a photoluminescence excitation source. Photoluminescence decay was approximated by two exhibitors. The laser-exposed area has the amplitude of the first-lifetime component (A1) twice as much as before, with increasing τ1. At the same time, the second-lifetime component (A2) decreases. These changes evidence a modification of the surface groups of carbon dots. The detected effect can be used to create thermostable fluorescent marks, the physical size of which is bounded by the diffraction limit of the optics (~ 200-300 nm) used for exposure and to improve the optical properties of carbon dots or in the field of optical encryption. Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russian Federation, goszadanie no. 2019-1080 and financially supported by Government of Russian Federation, Grant 08-08.

Keywords: carbon dots, photoactivation, optical properties, photoluminescence and absorption spectra

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Authors: Ian Christopher Rocha

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This study aimed to determine the association of the quality of life (QOL) of the caregivers of children in need of special protection (CNSP) in child-caring institutions in Metro Manila with the levels of their role overload (RO) and role distress (RD). The CNSP in this study covered the orphaned, abandoned, abused, neglected, exploited, and mentally-challenged children. In this study, the domains of QOL included physical health (PH), psychological health, social health (SH), and living conditions (LC). It also intended to ascertain the association of their personal and work-related characteristics with their RO and RD levels. The respondents of this study were 130 CNSP caregivers in 17 residential child-rearing institutions in Metro Manila. A purposive non-probability sampling was used. Using a quantitative methodological approach, the survey method was utilized to gather data with the use of a self-administered structured questionnaire. Data were analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Results revealed that the level of RO, the level of RD, and the QOL of the CNSP caregivers were all moderate. Data also suggested that there were significant positive relationships between the RO level and the caregivers’ characteristics, such as age, the number of training, and years of service in the institution. At the same time, the findings revealed that there were significant positive relationships between the RD level and the caregivers’ characteristics, such as age and hours of care rendered to their care recipients. In addition, the findings suggested that all domains of their QOL obtained significant relationships with their RO level. For the correlations of their level of RO and their QOL domains, the PH and the LC obtained a moderate negative correlation with the RO level while the rest of the domains obtained weak negative correlations with RO level. For the correlations of their level of RD and the QOL domains, all domains, except SH, obtained strong negative correlations with the level of RD. The SH revealed to have a moderate negative correlation with RD level. In conclusion, caregivers who are older experience higher levels of RO and RD; caregivers who have more training and years of service experience the higher level of RO; and caregivers who have longer hours of rendered care experience the higher level of RD. In addition, the study affirmed that if the levels of RO and RD are high, the QOL is low, and vice versa. Therefore, the RO and RD levels are reliable predictors of the caregivers’ QOL. In relation, the caregiving situation in the Philippines revealed to be unique and distinct from other countries because the levels of RO and RD and the QOL of Filipino CNSP caregivers were all moderate in contrast with their foreign counterparts who experience high caregiving RO and RD leading to low QOL.

Keywords: quality of life, caregivers, children in need of special protection, physical health, psychological health, social health, living conditions, role overload, role distress

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Authors: Juan-Pedro Rica-Peromingo

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Nowadays, corpus linguistics has become a key research methodology for Translation Studies, which broadens the scope of cross-linguistic studies. In the case of the study presented here, the approach used focuses on learners with little or no experience to study, at an early stage, general mistakes and errors, the correct or incorrect use of translation strategies, and to improve the translational competence of the students. Led by Sylviane Granger and Marie-Aude Lefer of the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics of the University of Louvain, the MUST corpus (MUltilingual Student Translation Corpus) is an international project which brings together partners from Europe and worldwide universities and connects Learner Corpus Research (LCR) and Translation Studies (TS). It aims to build a corpus of translations carried out by students including both direct (L2 > L1) an indirect (L1 > L2) translations, from a great variety of text types, genres, and registers in a wide variety of languages: audiovisual translations (including dubbing, subtitling for hearing population and for deaf population), scientific, humanistic, literary, economic and legal translation texts. This paper focuses on the work carried out by the Spanish team from the Complutense University (UCMA), which is part of the MUST project, and it describes the specific features of the corpus built by its members. All the texts used by UCMA are either direct or indirect translations between English and Spanish. Students’ profiles comprise translation trainees, foreign language students with a major in English, engineers studying EFL and MA students, all of them with different English levels (from B1 to C1); for some of the students, this would be their first experience with translation. The MUST corpus is searchable via Hypal4MUST, a web-based interface developed by Adam Obrusnik from Masaryk University (Czech Republic), which includes a translation-oriented annotation system (TAS). A distinctive feature of the interface is that it allows source texts and target texts to be aligned, so we can be able to observe and compare in detail both language structures and study translation strategies used by students. The initial data obtained point out the kind of difficulties encountered by the students and reveal the most frequent strategies implemented by the learners according to their level of English, their translation experience and the text genres. We have also found common errors in the graduate and postgraduate university students’ translations: transfer errors, lexical errors, grammatical errors, text-specific translation errors, and cultural-related errors have been identified. Analyzing all these parameters will provide more material to bring better solutions to improve the quality of teaching and the translations produced by the students.

Keywords: corpus studies, students’ corpus, the MUST corpus, translation studies

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Authors: Raj Kumar, Prem Felix Siril

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The poor aqueous solubility of many pharmaceutical drugs and potential drug candidates is a big challenge in drug development. Nanoformulation of such candidates is one of the major solutions for the delivery of such drugs. We initially developed the evaporation assisted solvent-antisolvent interaction (EASAI) method. EASAI method is use full to prepared nanoparticles of poor water soluble drugs with spherical morphology and particles size below 100 nm. However, to further improve the effect formulation to reduce number of dose and side effect it is important to control the delivery of drugs. However, many drug delivery systems are available. Among the many nano-drug carrier systems, solid lipid nanoparticles (SLNs) have many advantages over the others such as high biocompatibility, stability, non-toxicity and ability to achieve controlled release of drugs and drug targeting. SLNs can be administered through all existing routes due to high biocompatibility of lipids. SLNs are usually composed of lipid, surfactant and drug were encapsulated in lipid matrix. A number of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have poor bioavailability resulting from their poor aqueous solubility. In the present work, SLNs loaded with NSAIDs such as Nabumetone (NBT), Ketoprofen (KP) and Ibuprofen (IBP) were successfully prepared using different lipids and surfactants. We studied and optimized experimental parameters using a number of lipids, surfactants and NSAIDs. The effect of different experimental parameters such as lipid to surfactant ratio, volume of water, temperature, drug concentration and sonication time on the particles size of SLNs during the preparation using hot-melt sonication was studied. It was found that particles size was directly proportional to drug concentration and inversely proportional to surfactant concentration, volume of water added and temperature of water. SLNs prepared at optimized condition were characterized thoroughly by using different techniques such as dynamic light scattering (DLS), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and differential scanning calorimetry and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). We successfully prepared the SLN of below 220 nm using different lipids and surfactants combination. The drugs KP, NBT and IBP showed 74%, 69% and 53% percentage of entrapment efficiency with drug loading of 2%, 7% and 6% respectively in SLNs of Campul GMS 50K and Gelucire 50/13. In-vitro drug release profile of drug loaded SLNs is shown that nearly 100% of drug was release in 6 h.

Keywords: nanoparticles, delivery, solid lipid nanoparticles, hot-melt sonication, poor water soluble drugs, solubility, bioavailability

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Authors: Chinedu F. Anochie

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The presence of gangue particles in recovered metal concentrates has been a serious challenge to ore dressing engineers. Middlings lower the quality of concentrates, and in most cases, drastically affect the smelter terms, owing to exorbitant amounts paid by Mineral Processing industries as treatment charge. Models which encourage optimization of liberation operations have been utilized in most ore beneficiation industries to reduce the presence of locked particles in valuable concentrates. Moreover, methods such as incorporation of regrind mills, scavenger, rougher and cleaner cells, to the milling and flotation plants has been widely employed to tackle these concerns, and to optimize the grade–recovery relationship of metal concentrates. This work compared the crushing and grinding method of liberation, to the mine to mill route, by evaluating the proportion of middlings present in selectively processed complex Pb-Zn ore samples. To establish the effect of size reduction operations on the percentage of locked particles present in recovered concentrates, two similar samples of complex Pb- Zn ores were processed. Following blasting operation, the first ore sample was ground directly in a ball mill (Mine to Mill Route of Comminution), while the other sample was manually crushed, and subsequently ground in the ball mill (Crushing and Grinding Route of Comminution). The two samples were separately sieved in a mesh to obtain the desired representative particle sizes. An equal amount of each sample that would be processed in the flotation circuit was then obtained with the aid of a weighing balance. These weighed fine particles were simultaneously processed in the flotation circuit using the selective flotation technique. Sodium cyanide, Methyl isobutyl carbinol, Sodium ethyl xanthate, Copper sulphate, Sodium hydroxide, Lime and Isopropyl xanthate, were the reagents used to effect differential flotation of the two ore samples. Analysis and calculations showed that the degree of liberation obtained for the ore sample which went through the conventional crushing and grinding route of comminution, was higher than that of the directly milled run off mine (ROM) ore. Similarly, the proportion of middlings obtained from the separated galena (PbS) and sphalerite (ZnS) concentrates, were lower for the crushed and ground ore sample. A concise data which proved that the mine to mill method of size reduction is not the most ideal technique for the recovery of quality metal concentrates has been established.

Keywords: comminution, degree of liberation, middlings, mine to mill

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Authors: Balogun R. Ayodeji, Adefisan E. Adesanya, Adeyewa Z. Debo, E. C. Okogbue

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The need to investigate diurnal weather circles in West Africa is coined in the fact that complex interactions often results from diurnal weather patterns. This study investigates diurnal circles of wind, rainfall and convective properties using six (6) hour interval data from the ERA-Interim and the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM). The seven distinct zones, used in this work and classified as rainforest (west-coast, dry, Nigeria-Cameroon), Savannah (Nigeria, and Central Africa and South Sudan (CASS)), Sudano-Sahel, and Sahel, were clearly indicated by the rainfall pattern in each zones. Results showed that the land‐ocean warming contrast was more strongly sensitive to seasonal cycle and has been very weak during March-May (MAM) but clearly spelt out during June-September (JJAS). Dipoles of wind convergence/divergence and wet/dry precipitation, between CASS and Nigeria Savannah zones, were identified in morning and evening hours of MAM, whereas distinct night and day anomaly, in the same location of CASS, were found to be consistent during the JJAS season. Diurnal variation of convective properties showed that stratiform precipitation, due to the extremely low occurrence of flashcount climatology, was dominant during morning hours for both MAM and JJAS than other periods of the day. On the other hand, diurnal variation of the system sizes showed that small system sizes were most dominant during the day time periods for both MAM and JJAS, whereas larger system sizes were frequent during the evening, night, and morning hours. The locations of flashcount and system sizes agreed with earlier results that morning and day-time hours were dominated by stratiform precipitation and small system sizes respectively. Most results clearly showed that the eastern locations of Sudano and Sahel were consistently dry because rainfall and precipitation features were predominantly few. System sizes greater than or equal to 800 km² were found in the western axis of the Sudano and Sahel zones, whereas the eastern axis, particularly in the Sahel zone, had minimal occurrences of small/large system sizes. From the results of locations of extreme systems, flashcount greater than 275 in one single system was never observed during the morning (6Z) diurnal, whereas, the evening (18Z) diurnal had the most frequent cases (at least 8) of flashcount exceeding 275 in one single system. Results presented had shown the importance of diurnal variation in understanding precipitation, flashcount, system sizes patterns at diurnal scales, and understanding land-ocean contrast, precipitation, and wind field anomaly at diurnal scales.

Keywords: convective properties, diurnal circle, flashcount, system sizes

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Authors: Richard Byrne, Emma Mulliner

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Smart cities are a vision for the future that is increasingly becoming a reality. While a key concept of the smart city is the ability to capture, communicate, and process data that has long been produced through day-to-day activities of the city, much of the assessment models in place neglect this fact to focus on ‘smartness’ concepts. Although it is true technology often provides the opportunity to capture and communicate data in more effective ways, there are also human processes involved that are just as important. The growing importance with regards to the use and ownership of data in society can be seen by all with companies such as Facebook and Google increasingly coming under the microscope, however, why is the same scrutiny not applied to cities? The research area is therefore of great importance to the future of our cities here and now, while the findings will be of just as great importance to our children in the future. This research aims to understand the influence data is having on organisations operating throughout the smart cities sector and employs a mixed-method research approach in order to best answer the following question: Would a data-based evaluation model for smart cities be more appropriate than a smart-based model in assessing the development of the smart city? A fully comprehensive literature review concluded that there was a requirement for a data-driven assessment model for smart cities. This was followed by a documentary analysis to understand the root source of data integration to the smart city. A content analysis of city data platforms enquired as to the alternative approaches employed by cities throughout the UK and draws on best practice from New York to compare and contrast. Grounded in theory, the research findings to this point formulated a qualitative analysis framework comprised of: the changing environment influenced by data, the value of data in the smart city, the data ecosystem of the smart city and organisational response to the data orientated environment. The framework was applied to analyse primary data collected through the form of interviews with both public and private organisations operating throughout the smart cities sector. The work to date represents the first stage of data collection that will be built upon by a quantitative research investigation into the feasibility of data network effects in the smart city. An analysis into the benefits of data interoperability supporting services to the smart city in the areas of health and transport will conclude the research to achieve the aim of inductively forming a framework that can be applied to future smart city policy. To conclude, the research recognises the influence of technological perspectives in the development of smart cities to date and highlights this as a challenge to introduce theory applied with a planning dimension. The primary researcher has utilised their experience working in the public sector throughout the investigation to reflect upon what is perceived as a gap in practice of where we are today, to where we need to be tomorrow.

Keywords: data, planning, policy development, smart cities

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Authors: Mohammed Fathima Shahanaaz, Shaik Fayazuddin, M. Uday Kiran

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Groundwater quality is deteriorating day by day in different parts of the world due to various reasons, toxic chemicals are being discharged without proper treatment into inland water bodies and land which in turn add pollutants to the groundwater. In this kind of situation, the rural communities which do not have municipal drinking water have to rely on groundwater though it is polluted for various uses. Tannery industry is one of the major industry which provides economy and employment to India. Since most of the developed countries stopped using chemicals which are toxic, the tanning industry which uses chromium as its major element are being shifted towards developing countries. Most of the tanning industries in India can be found in clusters concentrated mainly in states of Tamilnadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and limited places of Punjab. Limited work is present in the case of tanneries of Warangal. There exists 18 group of tanneries in Desaipet, Enamamula region of Warangal, out of which 4 are involved in dry process and are low responsible for groundwater pollution. These units of tanneries are discharging their effluents after treatment into Sai Cheruvu. Though the treatment effluents are being discharged, the Sai Cheruvu is turned in to Pink colour, with higher levels of BOD, COD, chromium, chlorides, total hardness, TDS and sulphates. An attempt was made to analyse the groundwater samples around this polluted Sai Cheruvu region since literature shows that a single tannery can pollute groundwater to a radius of 7-8 kms from the point of disposal. Sample are collected from 6 different locations around Sai Cheruvu. Analysis was performed for determining various constituents in groundwater such as pH, EC, TDS, TH, Ca+2, Mg+2, HCO3-, Na+, K+, Cl-, SO42-, NO3-, F and Cr+6. The analysis of these constitutes gave values greater than permissible limits. Even chromium is also present in groundwater samples which is exceeding permissible limits People in Paidepally and Sardharpeta villages already stopped the usage of groundwater. They are buying bottle water for drinking purpose. Though they are not using groundwater for drinking purpose complaints are made about using this water for washing also. So treatment process should be adopted for groundwater which should be simple and efficient. In this study rice husk silica (RHS) is used to treat pollutants in groundwater with varying dosages of RHS and contact time. Rice husk is treated, dried and place in a muffle furnace for 6 hours at 650°C. Reduction is observed in total hardness, chlorides and chromium levels are observed after the application RHS. Pollutants reached permissible limits for 27.5mg/l and 50 mg/l of dosage for a contact time of 130 min at constant pH and temperature.

Keywords: chromium, groundwater, rice husk silica, tanning industries

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Authors: Azza El-Medany, Jamila El-Medany

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Residential and agricultural pesticide use is widespread in the world. Their extensive and indiscriminative use, in addition with their ability to interact with biological systems other than their primary targets constitute a health hazards to both humans and animals. The toxic effects of pesticides include alterations in metabolism; there is a lack of knowledge that organophosphates can cause pancreatic toxicity. The primary goal of this work is to study the effects of chronic exposure to Diazinon an organophosphate used in agriculture on pancreatic tissues and evaluate the ameliorating effect of Mesna as antioxidant on the toxicity of Diazinon on pancreatic tissues.40 adult male rats, their weight ranged between 300-350 g. The rats were classified into three groups; control (10 rats) was received corn oil at a dose of 1 0 mg/kg/day by gavage once a day for 2 months. Diazinon (15 rats) was received Diazinon at a dose of 10 mg/kg/day dissolved in corn oil by gavage once a day for 2 months. Treated group (15 rats), were received Mesna 180mg/kg once a week by gavage 15 minutes before administration of Diazinon for 2 months. At the end of the experiment, animals were anesthetized, blood samples were taken by cardiac puncture for glucose and insulin assays and pancreas was removed and divided into 3 portions; first portion for histopathological study; second portion for ultrastructural study; third portion for biochemical study using Elisa Kits including determination of malondialdehyde (MDA), tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), myeloperoxidase activity (MPO), interleukin 1β (IL-1β). A significant increase in the levels of MDA, TNF-α, MPO activity, IL-1β, serum glucose levels in the toxicated group with Diazinon were observed, while a significant reduction was noticed in GSH in serum insulin levels. After treatment with Mesna a significant reduction was observed in the previously mentioned parameters except that there was a significant rise in GSH in insulin levels. Histopathological and ultra-structural studies showed destruction in pancreatic tissues and β cells were the most affected cells among the injured islets as compared with the control group. The current study try to spot light about the effects of chronic exposure to pesticides on vital organs as pancreas also the role of oxidative stress that may be induced by them in evoking their toxicity. This study shows the role of antioxidant drugs in ameliorating or preventing the toxicity. This appears to be a promising approach that may be considered as a complementary treatment of pesticide toxicity.

Keywords: Diazinon, reduced glutathione, myeloperoxidase activity, tumor necrosis factor α, Mesna

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Authors: Chiahsu Yang, Peiling Wu, Ted Ho

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From emphasizing economic development to stressing public happiness, the international community mainly hopes to be able to understand whether the quality of life for the public is becoming better. The Better Life Index (BLI) constructed by OECD uses living conditions and quality of life as starting points to cover 11 areas of life and to convey the state of the general public’s well-being. In light of the BLI framework, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) of the Executive Yuan instituted the Gross National Happiness Index to understand the needs of the general public and to measure the progress of the aforementioned conditions in residents across the island. Whereas living conditions consist of income and wealth, jobs and earnings, and housing conditions, health status, work and life balance, education and skills, social connections, civic engagement and governance, environmental quality, personal security. The ICT area consists of health care, living environment, ICT-enabled communication, transportation, government, education, pleasure, purchasing, job & employment. In the wake of further science and technology development, rapid formation of information societies, and closer integration between lifestyles and information societies, the public’s well-being within information societies has indeed become a noteworthy topic. the Board of Science and Technology of the Executive Yuan use the OECD’s BLI as a reference in the establishment of the Taiwan-specific ICT-Enabled Better Life Index. Using this index, the government plans to examine whether the public’s quality of life is improving as well as measure the public’s satisfaction with current digital quality of life. This understanding will enable the government to gauge the degree of influence and impact that each dimension of digital services has on digital life happiness while also serving as an important reference for promoting digital service development. The content of the ICT Enabled Better Life Index. Information and communications technology (ICT) has been affecting people’s living styles, and further impact people’s quality of life (QoL). Even studies have shown that ICT access and usage have both positive and negative impact on life satisfaction and well-beings, many governments continue to invest in e-government programs to initiate their path to information society. This research is the few attempts to link the e-government benchmark to the subjective well-being perception, and further address the gap between user’s perception and existing hard data assessment, then propose a model to trace measurement results back to the original public policy in order for policy makers to justify their future proposals.

Keywords: information and communications technology, quality of life, satisfaction, well-being

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Authors: M. Naimi, M. B. Khaled

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The aim of the present work was to test in vitro inhibition of food pathogens and spoilage bacteria by crude bacteriocins from autochthonous lactic acid bacteria. Thirty autochthonous lactic acid bacteria isolated previously, belonging to the genera: Lactobacillus, Carnobacterium, Lactococcus, Vagococcus, Streptococcus, and Pediococcus, have been screened by an agar spot test and a well diffusion assay against Gram-positive and Gram-negative harmful bacteria: Bacillus cereus, Bacillus subtilis ATCC 6633, Escherichia coli ATCC 8739, Salmonella typhimurium ATCC 14028, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa under conditions means to reduce lactic acid and hydrogen peroxide effect to select bacteria with high bacteriocinogenic potential. Furthermore, crude bacteriocins semiquantification and heat sensitivity to different temperatures (80, 95, 110°C, and 121°C) were performed. Another exploratory test concerning the response of St. aureus ATCC 6538 to the presence of crude bacteriocins was realized. It has been observed by the agar spot test that fifteen candidates were active toward Gram-positive targets strains. The secondary screening demonstrated an antagonistic activity oriented only against St. aureus ATCC 6538, leading to the selection of five isolates: Lm14, Lm21, Lm23, Lm24, and Lm25 with a larger inhibition zone compared to the others. The ANOVA statistical analysis reveals a small variation of repeatability: Lm21: 0.56%, Lm23: 0%, Lm25: 1.67%, Lm14: 1.88%, Lm24: 2.14%. Conversely, slight variation was reported in terms of inhibition diameters: 9.58± 0.40, 9.83± 0.46, and 10.16± 0.24 8.5 ± 0.40 10 mm for, Lm21, Lm23, Lm25, Lm14and Lm24, indicating that the observed potential showed a heterogeneous distribution (BMS = 0.383, WMS = 0.117). The repeatability coefficient calculated displayed 7.35%. As for the bacteriocins semiquantification, the five samples exhibited production amounts about 4.16 for Lm21, Lm23, Lm25 and 2.08 AU/ml for Lm14, Lm24. Concerning the sensitivity the crude bacteriocins were fully insensitive to heat inactivation, until 121°C, they preserved the same inhibition diameter. As to, kinetic of growth , the µmax showed reductions in pathogens load for Lm21, Lm23, Lm25, Lm14, Lm24 of about 42.92%, 84.12%, 88.55%, 54.95%, 29.97% in the second trails. Inversely, this pathogen growth after five hours displayed differences of 79.45%, 12.64%, 11.82%, 87.88%, 85.66% in the second trails, compared to the control. This study showed potential inhibition to the growth of this food pathogen, suggesting the possibility to improve the hygienic food quality.

Keywords: exploratory test, lactic acid bacteria, crude bacteriocins, spoilage, pathogens

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Authors: Begum Koru, Isik Aybay, Demet Celik Ulusoy

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The discipline of law is quite complex and has its own terminology. Apart from written legal rules, there is also living law, which refers to legal practice. Basic legal rules aim at the happiness of individuals in social life and have different characteristics in different branches such as public or private law. On the other hand, law is a national phenomenon. The law of one nation and the legal system applied on the territory of another nation may be completely different. People who are experts in a particular field of law in one country may have insufficient expertise in the law of another country. Today, in addition to the local nature of law, international and even supranational law rules are applied in order to protect basic human values and ensure the protection of human rights around the world. Systems that offer algorithmic solutions to legal problems using artificial intelligence (AI) tools will perhaps serve to produce very meaningful results in terms of human rights. However, algorithms to be used should not be developed by only computer experts, but also need the contribution of people who are familiar with law, values, judicial decisions, and even the social and political culture of the society to which it will provide solutions. Otherwise, even if the algorithm works perfectly, it may not be compatible with the values of the society in which it is applied. The latest developments involving the use of AI techniques in legal systems indicate that artificial law will emerge as a new field in the discipline of law. More AI systems are already being applied in the field of law, with examples such as predicting judicial decisions, text summarization, decision support systems, and classification of documents. Algorithms for legal systems employing AI tools, especially in the field of prediction of judicial decisions and decision support systems, have the capacity to create automatic decisions instead of judges. When the judge is removed from this equation, artificial intelligence-made law created by an intelligent algorithm on its own emerges, whether the domain is national or international law. In this work, the aim is to make a general analysis of this new topic. Such an analysis needs both a literature survey and a perspective from computer experts' and lawyers' point of view. In some societies, the use of prediction or decision support systems may be useful to integrate international human rights safeguards. In this case, artificial law can serve to produce more comprehensive and human rights-protective results than written or living law. In non-democratic countries, it may even be thought that direct decisions and artificial intelligence-made law would be more protective instead of a decision "support" system. Since the values of law are directed towards "human happiness or well-being", it requires that the AI algorithms should always be capable of serving this purpose and based on the rule of law, the principle of justice and equality, and the protection of human rights.

Keywords: AI and law, artificial law, protection of human rights, AI tools for legal systems

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Authors: Amin Asgarian, Ghyslaine McClure

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Proper seismic evaluation of Non-Structural Components (NSCs) mandates an accurate estimation of floor seismic demands (i.e. acceleration and displacement demands). Most of the current international codes incorporate empirical equations to calculate equivalent static seismic force for which NSCs and their anchorage system must be designed. These equations, in general, are functions of component mass and peak seismic acceleration to which NSCs are subjected to during the earthquake. However, recent studies have shown that these recommendations are suffered from several shortcomings such as neglecting the higher mode effect, tuning effect, NSCs damping effect, etc. which cause underestimation of the component seismic acceleration demand. This work is aimed to circumvent the aforementioned shortcomings of code provisions as well as improving them by proposing a simplified, practical, and yet accurate approach to generate acceleration Floor Design Spectra (FDS) directly from corresponding Uniform Hazard Spectra (UHS) (i.e. design spectra for structural components). A database of 27 Reinforced Concrete (RC) buildings in which Ambient Vibration Measurements (AVM) have been conducted. The database comprises 12 low-rise, 10 medium-rise, and 5 high-rise buildings all located in Montréal, Canada and designated as post-disaster buildings or emergency shelters. The buildings are subjected to a set of 20 compatible seismic records and Floor Response Spectra (FRS) in terms of pseudo acceleration are derived using the proposed approach for every floor of the building in both horizontal directions considering 4 different damping ratios of NSCs (i.e. 2, 5, 10, and 20% viscous damping). Several effective parameters on NSCs response are evaluated statistically. These parameters comprise NSCs damping ratios, tuning of NSCs natural period with one of the natural periods of supporting structure, higher modes of supporting structures, and location of NSCs. The entire spectral region is divided into three distinct segments namely short-period, fundamental period, and long period region. The derived roof floor response spectra for NSCs with 5% damping are compared with the 5% damping UHS and procedure are proposed to generate roof FDS for NSCs with 5% damping directly from 5% damped UHS in each spectral region. The generated FDS is a powerful, practical, and accurate tool for seismic design and assessment of acceleration-sensitive NSCs particularly in existing post-critical buildings which have to remain functional even after the earthquake and cannot tolerate any damage to NSCs.

Keywords: earthquake engineering, operational and functional components (OFCs), operational modal analysis (OMA), seismic assessment and design

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Authors: Le Jiang, Chua Jinxing

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Introduction: The recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the west Africa has drawn global concern. With a high fatality rate and direct human-to-human transmission, it has spread between countries and caused great damages for patients and family who are affected. Being the designated hospital to manage epidemic outbreak in Singapore, Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) is facing great challenges in preparation and managing of potential outbreak of emerging infectious disease such as Ebola virus disease. Aim: We conducted an infection control drill in TTSH emergency department to assess the readiness of healthcare and allied health workers in managing suspected Ebola patients. It also helps to review current Ebola clinical protocol and work instruction to ensure more smooth and safe practice in managing Ebola patients in TTSH emergency department. Result: General preparedness level of staffs involved in managing Ebola virus disease in TTSH emergency department is not adequate. Knowledge deficits of staffs on Ebola personal protective equipment gowning and degowning process increase the risk of potential cross contamination in patient care. Loopholes are also found in current clinical protocol, such as unclear instructions and inaccurate information, which need to be revised to promote better staff performance in patient management. Logistic issues such as equipment dysfunction and inadequate supplies can lead to ineffective communication among teams and causing harm to patients in emergency situation. Conclusion: The infection control drill identified the need for more well-structured and clear clinical protocols to be in place to promote participants performance. In addition to quality protocols and guidelines, systemic training and annual refresher for all staffs in the emergency department are essential to prepare staffs for the outbreak of Ebola virus disease. Collaboration and communication with allied health staffs are also crucial for smooth delivery of patient care and minimising the potential human suffering, properties loss or injuries caused by disease. Therefore, more clinical drills with collaboration among various departments involved are recommended to be conducted in the future to monitor and assess readiness of TTSH emergency department in managing Ebola virus disease.

Keywords: ebola, emergency department, infection control drill, Tan Tock Seng Hospital

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Authors: Fadi Saleh, Çığdem Sezer Zhmurov

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Biopharmaceuticals represent one of the wildest developing fields within biotechnology, and the biological macromolecules being produced inside cells have a variety of applications for therapies. In the past, mammalian cells, especially CHO cells, have been employed in the production of biopharmaceuticals. This is because these cells can achieve human-like completion of PTM. These systems, however, carry apparent disadvantages like high production costs, vulnerability to contamination, and limitations in scalability. This research is focused on the utilization of microalgae as a bioreactor system for the synthesis of biopharmaceutical glycoproteins in relation to PTMs, particularly N-glycosylation. The research points to a growing interest in microalgae as a potential substitute for more conventional expression systems. A number of advantages exist in the use of microalgae, including rapid growth rates, the lack of common human pathogens, controlled scalability in bioreactors, and the ability of some PTMs to take place. Thus, the potential of microalgae to produce recombinant proteins with favorable characteristics makes this a promising platform in order to produce biopharmaceuticals. The study focuses on the examination of the N-glycosylation pathways across different species of microalgae. This investigation is important as N-glycosylation—the process by which carbohydrate groups are linked to proteins—profoundly influences the stability, activity, and general performance of glycoproteins. Additionally, bioinformatics methodologies are employed to explain the genetic pathways implicated in N-glycosylation within microalgae, with the intention of modifying these organisms to produce glycoproteins suitable for human consumption. In this way, the present comparative analysis of the N-glycosylation pathway in humans and microalgae can be used to bridge both systems in order to produce biopharmaceuticals with humanized glycosylation profiles within the microalgal organisms. The results of the research underline microalgae's potential to help improve some of the limitations associated with traditional biopharmaceutical production systems. The study may help in the creation of a cost-effective and scale-up means of producing quality biopharmaceuticals by modifying microalgae genetically to produce glycoproteins with N-glycosylation that is compatible with humans. Improvements in effectiveness will benefit biopharmaceutical production and the biopharmaceutical sector with this novel, green, and efficient expression platform. This thesis, therefore, is thorough research into the viability of microalgae as an efficient platform for producing biopharmaceutical glycoproteins. Based on the in-depth bioinformatic analysis of microalgal N-glycosylation pathways, a platform for their engineering to produce human-compatible glycoproteins is set out in this work. The findings obtained in this research will have significant implications for the biopharmaceutical industry by opening up a new way of developing safer, more efficient, and economically more feasible biopharmaceutical manufacturing platforms.

Keywords: microalgae, glycoproteins, post-translational modification, genome

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Authors: Alsu F. Saifitdinova, Alexey S. Komissarov, Svetlana A. Galkina, Elena I. Koshel, Maria M. Kulak, Stephen J. O'Brien, Elena R. Gaginskaya

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The mystery of sex determination is one of the most ancient and still not solved until the end so far. In many species, sex determination is genetic and often accompanied by the presence of dimorphic sex chromosomes in the karyotype. Genomic sequencing gave the information about the gene content of sex chromosomes which allowed to reveal their origin from ordinary autosomes and to trace their evolutionary history. Female-specific W chromosome in birds as well as mammalian male-specific Y chromosome is characterized by the degeneration of gene content and the accumulation of repetitive DNA. Tandem repeats complicate the analysis of genomic data. Despite the best efforts chicken W chromosome assembly includes only 1.2 Mb from expected 55 Mb. Supplementing the information on the sex chromosome composition not only helps to complete the assembly of genomes but also moves us in the direction of understanding of the sex-determination systems evolution. A whole-genome survey to the assembly Gallus_gallus WASHUC 2.60 was applied for repeats search in assembled genome and performed search and assembly of high copy number repeats in unassembled reads of SRR867748 short reads datasets. For cytogenetic analysis conventional methods of fluorescent in situ hybridization was used for previously cloned W specific satellites and specifically designed directly labeled synthetic oligonucleotide DNA probe was used for bioinformatically identified repetitive sequence. Hybridization was performed with mitotic chicken chromosomes and manually isolated giant meiotic lampbrush chromosomes from growing oocytes. A novel chicken W specific satellite (GGAAA)n which is not co-localizes with any previously described classes of W specific repeats was identified and mapped with high resolution. In the composition of autosomes this repeat units was found as a part of upstream regions of gonad specific protein coding sequences. These findings may contribute to the understanding of the role of tandem repeats in sex specific differentiation regulation in birds and sex chromosome evolution. This work was supported by the postdoctoral fellowships from St. Petersburg State University (#1.50.1623.2013 and #1.50.1043.2014), the grant for Leading Scientific Schools (#3553.2014.4) and the grant from Russian foundation for basic researches (#15-04-05684). The equipment and software of Research Resource Center “Chromas” and Theodosius Dobzhansky Center for Genome Bioinformatics of Saint Petersburg State University were used.

Keywords: birds, lampbrush chromosomes, sex chromosomes, tandem repeats

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Authors: Paula Quiterio, Arlete Apolinario, Celia T. Sousa, Joao Azevedo, Paula Dias, Adelio Mendes, Joao P. Araujo

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Nowadays one of the mankind's greatest challenges has been the supply of low-cost and environmentally friendly energy sources as an alternative to non-renewable fossil fuels. Hydrogen has been considered a promising solution, representing a clean and low-cost fuel. It can be produced directly from clean and abundant resources, such as sunlight and water, using photoelectrochemical cells (PECs), in a process that mimics the nature´s photosynthesis. Hematite (alpha-Fe2O3) has attracted considerable attention as a promising photoanode for solar water splitting, due to its high chemical stability, nontoxicity, availability and low band gap (2.2 eV), which allows reaching a high thermodynamic solar-to-hydrogen efficiency of 16.8 %. However, the main drawbacks of hematite such as the short hole diffusion length and the poor conductivity that lead to high electron-hole recombination result in significant PEC efficiency losses. One strategy to overcome these limitations and to increase the PEC efficiency is to use 1D nanostructures, such as nanotubes (NTs) and nanowires (NWs), which present high aspect ratios and large surface areas providing direct pathways for electron transport up to the charge collector and minimizing the recombination losses. In particular, due to the ultrathin walls of the NTs, the holes can reach the surface faster than in other nanostructures, representing a key factor for the NTs photoresponse. In this work, we prepared hematite NWs and NTs, respectively by hydrothermal process and electrochemical anodization. For hematite NWs growing, we studied the effect of variable hydrothermal conditions, different annealing temperatures and time, and the use of Ti and Sn dopants on the morphology and PEC performance. The crystalline phase characterization by X-ray diffraction was crucial to distinguish the formation of hematite and other iron oxide phases, alongside its effect on the photoanodes conductivity and consequent PEC efficiency. The conductivity of the as-prepared NWs is very low, in the order of 10-5 S cm-1, but after doping and annealing optimization it increased by a factor of 105. A high photocurrent density of 1.02 mA cm-2 at 1.45 VRHE was obtained under simulated sunlight, which is a very promising value for this kind of hematite nanostructures. The stability of the photoelectrodes was also tested, presenting good stability after several J-V measurements over time. The NTs, synthesized by fast anodizations with potentials ranging from 20-100 V, presented a linear growth of the NTs pore walls, with very low thicknesses from 10 - 18 nm. These preliminary results are also very promising for the use of hematite photoelectrodes on PEC hydrogen applications.

Keywords: hematite, nanotubes, nanowires, photoelectrochemical cells

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Authors: Kim Norgaard Helmersen, Jan Silberberger

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Questions of style and reproducibility in relation to architectural design are not only continuously debated; the very concepts can seem quite provocative to architects, who like to think of architectural design as depending on intuition, ideas, and individual personalities. This standpoint - dominant in architectural discourse - is challenged in the present paper presenting early findings from a comparative STS-inspired research study of architectural design teaching and research at different architecture schools in varying national contexts. In philosophy of science framework, the paper reflects empirical observations of design teaching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen and presents a tentative theoretical framework for the on-going research project. The framework suggests that architecture – as a field of knowledge production – is mainly dominated by three epistemological positions, which will be presented and discussed. Besides serving as a loosely structured framework for future data analysis, the proposed framework brings forth the argument that architecture can be roughly divided into different schools of thought, like the traditional science disciplines. Without reducing the complexity of the discipline, describing its main intellectual positions should prove fruitful for the future development of architecture as a theoretical discipline, moving an architectural critique beyond discussions of taste preferences. Unlike traditional science disciplines, there is a lack of a community-wide, shared pool of codified references in architecture, with architects instead referencing art projects, buildings, and famous architects, when positioning their standpoints. While these inscriptions work as an architectural reference system, to be compared to codified theories in academic writing of traditional research, they are not used systematically in the same way. As a result, architectural critique is often reduced to discussions of taste and subjectivity rather than epistemological positioning. Architects are often criticized as judges of taste and accused that their rationality is rooted in cultural-relative aesthetical concepts of taste closely linked to questions of style, but arguably their supposedly subjective reasoning, in fact, forms part of larger systems of thought. Putting architectural ‘styles’ under a loop, and tracing their philosophical roots, can potentially open up a black box in architectural theory. Besides ascertaining and recognizing the existence of specific ‘styles’ and thereby schools of thought in current architectural discourse, the study could potentially also point at some mutations of the conventional – something actually ‘new’ – of potentially high value for architectural design education.

Keywords: architectural theory, design research, science and technology studies (STS), sociology of architecture

Procedia PDF Downloads 126

Authors: Aprajeeta Jha, Punyadarshini P. Tripathy

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Drying technologies for various food processing operations shares an inevitable linkage with energy, cost and environmental sustainability. Hence, solar drying of food grains has become imperative choice to combat duo challenges of meeting high energy demand for drying and to address climate change scenario. But performance and reliability of solar dryers depend hugely on sunshine period, climatic conditions, therefore, offer a limited control over drying conditions and have lower efficiencies. Solar drying technology, supported by Photovoltaic (PV) power plant and hybrid type solar air collector can potentially overpower the disadvantages of solar dryers. For development of such robust hybrid dryers; to ensure quality and shelf-life of paddy grains the optimization of process parameter becomes extremely critical. Investigation of the moisture distribution profile within the grains becomes necessary in order to avoid over drying or under drying of food grains in hybrid solar dryer. Computational simulations based on finite element modeling can serve as potential tool in providing a better insight of moisture migration during drying process. Hence, present work aims at optimizing the process parameters and to develop a 3-dimensional (3D) finite element model (FEM) for predicting moisture profile in paddy during solar drying. COMSOL Multiphysics was employed to develop a 3D finite element model for predicting moisture profile. Furthermore, optimization of process parameters (power level, air velocity and moisture content) was done using response surface methodology in design expert software. 3D finite element model (FEM) for predicting moisture migration in single kernel for every time step has been developed and validated with experimental data. The mean absolute error (MAE), mean relative error (MRE) and standard error (SE) were found to be 0.003, 0.0531 and 0.0007, respectively, indicating close agreement of model with experimental results. Furthermore, optimized process parameters for drying paddy were found to be 700 W, 2.75 m/s at 13% (wb) with optimum temperature, milling yield and drying time of 42˚C, 62%, 86 min respectively, having desirability of 0.905. Above optimized conditions can be successfully used to dry paddy in PV integrated solar dryer in order to attain maximum uniformity, quality and yield of product. PV-integrated hybrid solar dryers can be employed as potential and cutting edge drying technology alternative for sustainable energy and food security.

Keywords: finite element modeling, moisture migration, paddy grain, process optimization, PV integrated hybrid solar dryer

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Authors: Saori Fujimoto, Hiromi Kawasaki, Mari Murakami, Yoko Ueno

Abstract:

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been spreading throughout the world. In Japan, many nursing universities have conducted online clinical practices to secure students’ learning opportunities. In the field of women’s health nursing, even after the pandemic ended, it will be worthwhile to utilize online practice in declining birthrate and reducing the burden of mothers. This study examined the learning effects of conducting online visits for mothers with infants during the COVID-19 pandemic by nursing students to enhance the students’ ability to carry out the online practice even in ordinary times effectively. Methods: Students were divided into groups of three, and information on the mothers was assessed, and the visits were planned. After role-play was conducted by the students and teachers, an online visit was conducted. The analysis target was the self-evaluation score of nine students who conducted online visits in June 2020 and had consented to participate. The evaluation contents included three items for assessment, two items for planning, one item for ethical consideration, five items for nursing practice, and two items for evaluation. The self-evaluation score ranged from 4 (‘Can do with a little advice’) to 1 (‘Can’t do with a little advice’). A univariate statistical analysis was performed. This study was approved by the Ethical Committee for Epidemiology of Hiroshima University. Results: The items with the highest mean (standard deviation) scores were ‘advocates for the dignity and the rights of mothers’ (3.89 (0.31)) and ‘communication behavior needed to create a trusting relationship’ (3.89 (0.31)).’ Next were the ‘individual nursing practice tailored to mothers (3.78 (0.42))’ and ‘review own practice and work on own task (3.78 (0.42)).’ The mean (standard deviation) of the items by type were as follows: three assessment items, 3.26 (0.70), two planning items, 3.11 (0.49), one ethical consideration item, 3.89 (0.31), five nursing practice items, 3.56 (0.54), and two evaluation items, 3.67 (0.47). Conclusion: The highest self-evaluations were for ‘advocates for the dignity and the rights of mothers’ and ‘communication behavior needed to create a trusting relationship.’ These findings suggest that the students were able to form good relationships with the mothers by improving their ability to effectively communicate and by presenting a positive attitude, even when conducting health visits online. However, the self-evaluation scores for assessment and planning were lower than those of ethical consideration, nursing practice, and evaluation. This was most likely due to a lack of opportunities and time to gather information and the need to modify and add plans in a short amount of time during one online visit. It is necessary to further consider the methods used in conducting online visits from the following viewpoints: methods of gathering information and the ability to make changes through multiple visits.

Keywords: infants, learning effects, mothers, online visit practice

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Authors: Mahmoud Farrag, Alaa Elhaweet, El-Sayed Akel, Mohsen Moustafa

Abstract:

The present work aimed to study the reproductive strategy of the common lesspsian puffer fish Lagocephalus sceleratus (Gmeln, 1879) from the Egyptian Mediterranean Waters. It is a famous migratory species plays an important role in the field of fisheries and ecology of aquatic ecosystem. The obtained results illustrated seven maturity stages of gonads as; I- Thread like stage: II- Immature stage (Virgin stage), III- Maturing stage (Developing Virgin and recovering spent), IV - Nearly ripe stage, V- Fully ripe; VI-Spawning stage, VII- Spent stage. Sex ratio, exhibited males had higher number than females representing 52.44 % of the total fishes with sex ratio 1: 0.91. Fish length corresponding to 50% maturation was 38.5 cm for males and 41 cm for females. The corresponding ages (age at first maturity) are equal to 2.14 and 2.27 years for male and female respectively. The gonado somatic index (GSI) increased from April for both sexes with peak in June (8.567±4.729) for males and May (6.769±4.662) for females, then the sharp decrease was observed in October showing prolong spawning season from April to September for both sexes. The hepato somatic indices (HSI) for males were lower values than those of females, it were high from December to early spawning (April & May), with the peak in April (5.217 ± 2.167) for males, and in March (5.453± 1.792) for females, then these values started to decrease towards the end of spawning period. The ova diameter ranged from 0.02 to 0.85mm, the mature ova ranged from 0.16 to 0.85mm and showed progressive increase from April towards September during spawning period introducing one peak of mature and ripe eggs. The absolute fecundity increased as the fish grew in weight and length; it was ranged from 260288 to 2372931 for fish weight and ranged from 698 to 3285 cm for length with an average of 1449522±720975. The relative fecundity ranged from 373 to 722 for fish weight with an average of 776±231, while it range from 5784 to 32957 for fish length groups ranged from 43-45 to 70-72 cm with an average of 24478 ±10011 eggs. Histological characters of gonads during the year of study indicating this fish species has prolonged spawning season from April to September where ripe oocytes were observed during this period. This species is considered totally or uni spawner with synchronous group as it contained one to two developmental stages at the same gonad and releases its ripe ova in one batch during the spawning season. These results illustrated more adaptation of this species in new habitat.

Keywords: reproductive biology, histology, Lagocephalus sceleratus, Mediterranean Sea, Egypt

Procedia PDF Downloads 431

Authors: Geyang Xia

Abstract:

In many countries, governments have responded to the growing demand for educational resources through school district systems, and there is substantial evidence that school district systems have been effective in promoting inter-district and inter-school equity in educational resources. However, the scarcity of quality educational resources has brought about varying levels of education among different school districts, making it a common choice for many parents to buy a house in the school district where a quality school is located, and they are even willing to bear huge commuting costs for this purpose. Moreover, this is evidenced by the fact that parents of families in school districts with quality education resources have longer average commute lengths and longer average commute distances than parents in average school districts. This "unequal traveling" under the influence of the school district system is more common in school districts at the primary level of education. This further reinforces the differential hierarchy of educational resources and raises issues of inequitable educational public services, education-led residential segregation, and gentrification of school district housing. Against this background, this paper takes Nanjing, a famous educational city in China, as a case study and selects the school districts where the top 10 public elementary schools are located. The study first identifies the spatio-temporal behavioral trajectory dataset of these high-quality school district households by using spatial vector data, decrypted cell phone signaling data, and census data. Then, by constructing a "house-school-work (HSW)" commuting pattern of the population in the school district where the high-quality educational resources are located, and based on the classification of the HSW commuting pattern of the population, school districts with long employment hours were identified. Ultimately, the mechanisms and patterns inherent in this unequal commuting are analyzed in terms of six aspects, including the centrality of school district location, functional diversity, and accessibility. The results reveal that the "unequal commuting" of Nanjing's high-quality school districts under the influence of the school district system occurs mainly in the peripheral areas of the city, and the schools matched with these high-quality school districts are mostly branches of prestigious schools in the built-up areas of the city's core. At the same time, the centrality of school district location and the diversity of functions are the most important influencing factors of unequal commuting in high-quality school districts. Based on the research results, this paper proposes strategies to optimize the spatial layout of high-quality educational resources and corresponding transportation policy measures.

Keywords: school-district system, high quality school district, commuting pattern, unequal traveling

Procedia PDF Downloads 97