Search results for: hybrid systems

Authors: Federico Valenzuela-Beltran, Sonia E. Ruiz, Alfredo Reyes-Salazar, Juan Bojorquez

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A reliability-based methodology which uses structural demand hazard curves to consider the increment of the ductility demands of structures with tilting is proposed. The approach considers the effect of two orthogonal components of the ground motions as well as the influence of soil-structure interaction. The approach involves the calculation of ductility demand hazard curves for symmetric systems and, alternatively, for systems with different degrees of asymmetry. To get this objective, demand hazard curves corresponding to different global ductility demands of the systems are calculated. Next, Uniform Exceedance Rate Spectra (UERS) are developed for a specific mean annual rate of exceedance value. Ratios between UERS corresponding to asymmetric and to symmetric systems located in soft soil of the valley of Mexico are obtained. Results indicate that the ductility demands corresponding to tilted structures may be several times higher than those corresponding to symmetric structures, depending on several factors such as tilting angle and vibration period of structure and soil.

Keywords: asymmetric yielding, seismic performance, structural reliability, tilted structures

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Authors: Feng Guo

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Human brain organoids, 3D brain tissue cultures derived from human pluripotent stem cells, hold promising potential in modeling neuroinflammation for a variety of neurological diseases. However, challenges remain in generating standardized human brain organoids that can recapitulate key physiological features of a human brain. Here, this study presents a series of organoids-on-a-chip systems to generate better human brain organoids and model neuroinflammation. By employing 3D printing and microfluidic 3D cell culture technologies, the study’s systems enable the reliable, scalable, and reproducible generation of human brain organoids. Compared with conventional protocols, this study’s method increased neural progenitor proliferation and reduced heterogeneity of human brain organoids. As a proof-of-concept application, the study applied this method to model substance use disorders.

Keywords: human brain organoids, microfluidics, organ-on-a-chip, neuroinflammation

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Authors: Hami Ashraf, Farid Kosari

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Graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) is a common complication of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation that can lead to significant morbidity and mortality. Histopathological examination of affected tissues is an essential tool for diagnosing and grading GvHD in animal models, which are used to study disease mechanisms and evaluate new therapies. In this systematic review, we identified and analyzed original research articles in PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar that described grading systems for GvHD in animal models based on histopathological features. We found that several grading systems have been developed, which vary in the tissues and criteria they assess, the severity scoring scales they use, and the level of detail they provide. Skin, liver, and gut are the most commonly evaluated tissues, but lung and thymus are also included in some systems. Our analysis highlights the need for standardized criteria and consistent use of grading systems to enable comparisons between studies and facilitate the translation of preclinical findings to clinical practice.

Keywords: graft-versus-host disease, GvHD, animal model, histopathology, grading system

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Authors: Susmita Roy, Madhavan Nallani

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In recent years' polymersomes, self-assembled polymeric vesicles emerge from block copolymers, have been widely investigated due to their enhance stability and unique advantageous properties compared to their phospholipid counterpart, liposomes, dendrimers, and micelles. It provides a distinctive platform for advanced therapeutics and the creation of complex (bio) catalytically active systems for research in Nanomedicine and synthetic biology. Inspired by nature, where compartmentalization of biological components is all ubiquitous, we are interested in developing a platform technology of self-assembled multifunctional compartments with applications in areas from targeted drug/gene delivery, biosensing, pharmaceutical to cosmetics. Polymersome surfaces can be a proper choice of derivatization with a controlled amount of functional groups. To achieve site-specific targeting of polymersomes, biological recognition motives can be attached to the polymersomes surface by standard bioconjugation techniques, (like esterification, amidation, thiol-maleimide coupling, click-chemistry routes or other coupling methods). Herein, we are developing easy going, one-step bioconjugation strategies for site-specific surface functionalized biodegradable polymeric and/or polymer-lipid hybrid vesicles for targeted drug delivery. Biodegradable polymer, polycaprolactone-b-polyethylene glycol (PCL-PEG), polylactic acid-b-polyethylene glycol (PLA-PEG) and phospholipid, 1-palmitoyl-2- oleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (POPC) has been widely used for numerous vesicle formulations. Some of these drug-loaded formulations are being tested on mice for controlled release. These surface functionalized polymersomes are also appropriate for membrane protein reconstitution/insertion, antibodies conjugation and various bioconjugation with diverse targeted molecules for controlled drug delivery.

Keywords: drug delivery, membrane protein, polymersome, surface modification

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Authors: H. Shokouhmand, M. Degheh, B. Sajadi, H. Sobhani

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The induct ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) systems are broadly used nowadays and their utilization is widened every day. Even though these systems are not applicable individually, they are very suitable supplements for the traditional filtration systems. The amount of inactivated microorganisms is dependent on the air velocity, lamp power, fluence rate distribution, and also germicidal susceptibility of microorganisms. In this paper, these factors are investigated utilizing an air-microorganism two-phase numerical model. The eulerian-lagrangian method was used to have more detailed information on the history of each particle. The UVGI system was modeled in three steps including: 1) modeling the air flow, 2) modeling the discrete phase of particles, 3) modeling the UV intensity field, and 4) modeling the particle inactivation. The results from modeling different lamp arrangements and powers showed that the system functions better at more homogeneous irradiation distribution. Since increasing the air flow rate of the device results in increasing of particle inactivation rate, the optimal air velocity shall be adjusted in accordance with the microorganism production rate, and the air quality requirement using the curves represented in this paper.

Keywords: CFD, microorganism, two-phase flow, ultraviolet germicidal irradiation

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Authors: Hoda Aslani, Mohammad Moghiman, Mohammad Aslani

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Considering the demand to reduce global warming potential and importance of solidification in various applications, there is an increasing interest in energy storage systems to find the efficient phase change materials. Therefore, this paper presents an experimental study and comparison on the potential of titania nanofluids with and without surfactant for cooling energy storage systems. A designed cooling generation device based on compression refrigeration cycle is used to explore nanofluids solidification characteristics. In this work, titania nanoparticles of 0.01, 0.02 and 0.04 wt.% are dispersed in deionized water as base fluid. Measurement of phase change parameters of nanofluids illustrates that the addition of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as surfactant to titania nanofluids advances the onset nucleation time and leads to lower solidification time. Also, the experimental results show that only adding 0.02 wt.% titania nanoparticles, especially in the case of nanofluids with a surfactant, can evidently reduce the supercooling degree by nearly 70%. Hence, it is concluded that there is a great energy saving potential in the energy storage systems using titania nanofluid with PVP.

Keywords: cooling energy storage, nanofluid, PVP, solidification, titania

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Authors: Nicolas Bae, Theodore L. Karavasilis

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Increasingly, a large number of new and existing tall buildings are required to improve their resilient performance against strong winds and earthquakes to minimize direct, as well as indirect damages to society. Those advent stationary functions of tall building structures in metropolitan regions can be severely hazardous, in socio-economic terms, which also increase the requirement of advanced seismic performance. To achieve these progressive requirements, the seismic reinforcement for some old, conventional buildings have become enormously costly. The methods of increasing the buildings’ resilience against wind or earthquake loads have also become more advanced. Up to now, vibration control devices, such as the passive damper system, is still regarded as an effective and an easy-to-install option, in improving the seismic resilience of buildings at affordable prices. The main purpose of this paper is to examine 1) the optimization of the shape of visco plastic brace damper (VPBD) system which is one of hybrid damper system so that it can maximize its energy dissipation capacity in tall buildings against wind and earthquake. 2) the verification of the seismic performance of the visco plastic brace damper system in tall buildings; up to forty-storey high steel frame buildings, by comparing the results of Non-Linear Response History Analysis (NLRHA), with and without a damper system. The most significant contribution of this research is to introduce the optimized hybrid damper system that is adequate for high rise buildings. The efficiency of this visco plastic brace damper system and the advantages of its use in tall buildings can be verified since tall buildings tend to be affected by wind load at its normal state and also by earthquake load after yielding of steel plates. The modeling of the prototype tall building will be conducted using the Opensees software. Three types of modeling were used to verify the performance of the damper (MRF, MRF with visco-elastic, MRF with visco-plastic model) 22-set seismic records used and the scaling procedure was followed according to the FEMA code. It is shown that MRF with viscous, visco-elastic damper, it is superior effective to reduce inelastic deformation such as roof displacement, maximum story drift, roof velocity compared to the MRF only.

Keywords: tall steel building, seismic retrofit, viscous, viscoelastic damper, performance based design, resilience based design

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Authors: Safa Ladhari, Alireza Saidi, Phuong Nguyen-Tri

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During health crises, such as COVID-19, using disposable protective equipment (PEs) (masks, gowns, etc.) causes long-term problems, increasing the volume of hazardous waste that must be handled safely and expensively. Therefore, producing textiles for antimicrobial and reusable materials is highly desirable to decrease the use of disposable PEs that should be treated as hazardous waste. In addition, if these items are used regularly in the workplace or for daily activities by the public, they will most likely end up in household waste. Furthermore, they may pose a high risk of contagion to waste collection workers if contaminated. Therefore, to protect the whole population in times of sanitary crisis, it is necessary to equip these materials with tools that make them resilient to the challenges of carrying out daily activities without compromising public health and the environment and without depending on them external technologies and producers. In addition, the materials frequently used for EPs are plastics of petrochemical origin. The subject of the present work is replacing petroplastics with bioplastic since it offers better biodegradability. The chosen polymer is polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), a family of polyhydroxyalkanoates synthesized by different bacteria. It has similar properties to conventional plastics. However, it is renewable, biocompatible, and has attractive barrier properties compared to other polyesters. These characteristics make it ideal for EP protection applications. The current research topic focuses on the preparation and rapid evaluation of the biological activity of nanotechnology-based antimicrobial agents to treat textile surfaces used for PE. This work will be carried out to provide antibacterial solutions that can be transferred to a workplace application in the fight against short-term biological risks. Three main objectives are proposed during this research topic: 1) the development of suitable methods for the deposition of antibacterial agents on the surface of textiles; 2) the development of a method for measuring the antibacterial activity of the prepared textiles and 3) the study of the biodegradability of the prepared textiles. The studied textile is a non-woven fabric based on a biodegradable polymer manufactured by the electrospinning method. Indeed, nanofibers are increasingly studied due to their unique characteristics, such as high surface-to-volume ratio, improved thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties, and confinement effects. The electrospun film will be surface modified by plasma treatment and then loaded with hybrid antibacterial silver and titanium dioxide nanoparticles by the dip-coating method. This work uses simple methods with emerging technologies to fabricate nanofibers with suitable size and morphology to be used as components for protective equipment. The antibacterial agents generally used are based on silver, zinc, copper, etc. However, to our knowledge, few researchers have used hybrid nanoparticles to ensure antibacterial activity with biodegradable polymers. Also, we will exploit visible light to improve the antibacterial effectiveness of the fabric, which differs from the traditional contact mode of killing bacteria and presents an innovation of active protective equipment. Finally, this work will allow for the innovation of new antibacterial textile materials through a simple and ecological method.

Keywords: protective equipment, antibacterial textile materials, biodegradable polymer, electrospinning, hybrid antibacterial nanoparticles

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Authors: Farzane Sadatnia, Bahram Fathi

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Today, all public and private organizations have found that the management of the world for key information related to the activities of a staff and its main essence and philosophy, though they constitute the management information systems are very helpful in this respect the right to apply systems can save a lot in terms of economic organizations including reducing the time decision - making, improve the quality of decision making, and cost savings to bring information systems is a backup system that can never be instead of logic and human reasoning, which can be used in the series is spreading, providing resources, and provide the necessary facilities, provide better services for users, balanced budget allocation, determine strengths and weaknesses and previous plans to review the current decisions and especially the decision . Hence; in this study attempts to the effect of an information system on a review of the organization.

Keywords: information system, planning, organization, coordination, control

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Authors: Emine Feyza Şükür, Mevlüt Türköz, Murat Dilmeç, Hüseyin Selçuk Halkacı

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In this study, a warm bulge test system was designed, built and experimentally validated to perform warm bulge tests with all necessary systems. In addition, performance of each sub-system is validated through repeated production and/or test runs as well as through part quality measurements. Validation and performance tests were performed to characterize the repeatability of the system. As a result of these tests, the desired temperature distribution on the sheet metal was obtained by the heating systems and the good repeatability of the bulge tests was obtained. Consequently, this study is expected to provide other researchers and manufacturer with a set of design and process guidelines to develop similar systems.

Keywords: design, test unit, warm bulge test unit, validation test

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Authors: Getaneh Berie Tarekegn

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A precise localization system is crucial for many artificial intelligence Internet of Things (AI-IoT) applications in the era of smart cities. Their applications include traffic monitoring, emergency alarming, environmental monitoring, location-based advertising, intelligent transportation, and smart health care. The most common method for providing continuous positioning services in outdoor environments is by using a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). Due to nonline-of-sight, multipath, and weather conditions, GNSS systems do not perform well in dense urban, urban, and suburban areas.This paper proposes a generative AI-based positioning scheme for large-scale wireless settings using fingerprinting techniques. In this article, we presented a semi-supervised deep convolutional generative adversarial network (S-DCGAN)-based radio map construction method for real-time device localization. It also employed a reliable signal fingerprint feature extraction method with t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding (t-SNE), which extracts dominant features while eliminating noise from hybrid WLAN and long-term evolution (LTE) fingerprints. The proposed scheme reduced the workload of site surveying required to build the fingerprint database by up to 78.5% and significantly improved positioning accuracy. The results show that the average positioning error of GAILoc is less than 0.39 m, and more than 90% of the errors are less than 0.82 m. According to numerical results, SRCLoc improves positioning performance and reduces radio map construction costs significantly compared to traditional methods.

Keywords: location-aware services, feature extraction technique, generative adversarial network, long short-term memory, support vector machine

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Authors: Aleksandrs Kovalcuks

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Egg yolk oil is a natural source of bioactive compounds such as unsaturated fatty acids, oil soluble vitamins, pigments and others. Bioactive compound content in egg yolk oil depends from its content in eggs, from which oil was extracted. Many studies show that bioactive compound content in egg is correlated to the content of these compounds in hen feed, but there is also an opinion that hen housing systems also have influence on egg chemical content. The aim of this study was to determine which factor, laying hen housing system or hen diet, has a primary influence on bioactive compound content in egg yolk oil. The egg yolk oil was extracted from eggs obtained from 4 different hen housing systems: cage, barn and two groups of free range. All hens were fed with commercially produced compound feed except one group of free range hens which get free diet – pastured hens. Extracted egg yolk oils were analyzed for fatty acids, oil soluble vitamins and β-carotene content. α-tocopherol, ergocalcipherol and polyunsaturated fatty acid content in egg yolk oil was higher from eggs obtained from all housing systems where hens were fed with commercial compound feed. β-carotene and retinol content in egg yolk oils from free range free diet eggs was significantly (p>0.05) higher that from other eggs because hens have access to green forage. Hen physical activity in free range housing systems decreases content of some bioactive compound in egg yolk oil.

Keywords: egg yolk oil, vitamins, caged eggs, free range

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Authors: M. Beheshti, S. Saegrov, T. M. Muthanna

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Separated sewer systems are designed to transfer the wastewater from houses and industrial sections to wastewater treatment plants. Unwanted water in the sewer systems is a well-known problem, i.e. storm-water inflow is around 50% of the foul sewer, and groundwater infiltration to the sewer system can exceed 50% of total wastewater volume in deteriorated networks. Infiltration and inflow of non-sewer water (I/I) into sewer systems is unfavorable in separated sewer systems and can trigger overloading the system and reducing the efficiency of wastewater treatment plants. Moreover, I/I has negative economic, environmental, and social impacts on urban areas. Therefore, for having sustainable management of urban sewer systems, I/I of unwanted water into the urban sewer systems should be considered carefully and maintenance and rehabilitation plan should be implemented on these water infrastructural assets. This study presents a methodology to identify and quantify the level of I/I into the sewer system. Amount of I/I is evaluated by accurate flow measurement in separated sewer systems for specified isolated catchments in Trondheim city (Norway). Advanced information about the characteristics of I/I is gained by CCTV inspection of sewer pipelines with high I/I contribution. Achieving enhanced knowledge about the detection and localization of non-sewer water in foul sewer system during the wet and dry weather conditions will enable the possibility for finding the problem of sewer system and prioritizing them and taking decisions for rehabilitation and renewal planning in the long-term. Furthermore, preventive measures and optimization of sewer systems functionality and efficiency can be executed by maintenance of sewer system. In this way, the exploitation of sewer system can be improved by maintenance and rehabilitation of existing pipelines in a sustainable way by more practical cost-effective and environmental friendly way. This study is conducted on specified catchments with different properties in Trondheim city. Risvollan catchment is one of these catchments with a measuring station to investigate hydrological parameters through the year, which also has a good database. For assessing the infiltration in a separated sewer system, applying the flow rate measurement method can be utilized in obtaining a general view of the network condition from infiltration point of view. This study discusses commonly used and advanced methods of localizing and quantifying I/I in sewer systems. A combination of these methods give sewer operators the possibility to compare different techniques and obtain reliable and accurate I/I data which is vital for long-term rehabilitation plans.

Keywords: flow rate measurement, infiltration and inflow (I/I), non-sewer water, separated sewer systems, sustainable management

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Authors: Expedito Pinto De Paula Junior

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Current systems such as artificial satellites, airplanes, automobiles, turbines, power systems and air traffic controls are becoming increasingly more complex and/or highly integrated as defined in SAE-ARP-4754A (Society Automotive Engineering - Certification considerations for highly-integrated or complex aircraft systems standard). Among other processes, the development of such systems requires careful Change and Configuration Management (CCM) to establish and maintain product integrity. Understand the maturity of CCM process based in historical approach is crucial for better implementation in hardware and software lifecycle. The sense of work organization, in all fields of development is directly related to the order and interrelation of the parties, changes in time, and record of these changes. Generally, is observed that engineers, administrators and managers invest more time in technical activities than in organization of work. More these professionals are focused in solving complex problems with a purely technical bias. CCM process is fundamental for development, production and operation of new products specially in the safety critical systems. The objective of this paper is open a discussion about the historical revision based in standards focus of CCM around the world in order to understand and reflect the importance across the years, the contribution of this process for technology evolution, to understand the mature of organizations in the system lifecycle project and the benefits of CCM to avoid errors and mistakes during the Lifecycle Product.

Keywords: changes, configuration management, historical, revision

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Authors: Yaghoubi N., Moore Z., Van Der Veen S. M., Pidcoe P. E., Thomas J. S., Dexheimer B.

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Optoelectronic 3D motion capture systems, such as the Vicon kinematic system, are widely utilized in biomedical research to track joint motion. These systems are considered powerful and accurate measurement tools with <2 mm average error. However, these systems are costly and may be difficult to implement and utilize in a clinical setting. 3D virtual reality (VR) is gaining popularity as an affordable and accessible tool to investigate motor control and perception in a controlled, immersive environment. The HTC Vive VR system includes puck-style trackers that seamlessly integrate into its VR environments. These affordable, wireless, lightweight trackers may be more feasible for clinical kinematic data collection. However, the accuracy of HTC Vive Trackers (3.0), when compared to optoelectronic 3D motion capture systems, remains unclear. In this preliminary study, we compared the HTC Vive Tracker system to a Vicon kinematic system in a simulated lumbar flexion task. A 6-DOF robot arm (SCORBOT ER VII, Eshed Robotec/RoboGroup, Rosh Ha’Ayin, Israel) completed various reaching movements to mimic increasing levels of hip flexion (15°, 30°, 45°). Light reflective markers, along with one HTC Vive Tracker (3.0), were placed on the rigid segment separating the elbow and shoulder of the robot. We compared position measures simultaneously collected from both systems. Our preliminary analysis shows no significant differences between the Vicon motion capture system and the HTC Vive tracker in the Z axis, regardless of hip flexion. In the X axis, we found no significant differences between the two systems at 15 degrees of hip flexion but minimal differences at 30 and 45 degrees, ranging from .047 cm ± .02 SE (p = .03) at 30 degrees hip flexion to .194 cm ± .024 SE (p < .0001) at 45 degrees of hip flexion. In the Y axis, we found a minimal difference for 15 degrees of hip flexion only (.743 cm ± .275 SE; p = .007). This preliminary analysis shows that the HTC Vive Tracker may be an appropriate, affordable option for gross motor motion capture when the Vicon system is not available, such as in clinical settings. Further research is needed to compare these two motion capture systems in different body poses and for different body segments.

Keywords: lumbar, vivetracker, viconsystem, 3dmotion, ROM

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Authors: Anette Hay, Zama Simamane

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Capacity-building and integration of practical activities is one of the key SDGs of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This paper will focus on SDG# 17 – “the means of implementation” - and the role of systems thinking in practice (STiP) in supporting both competence and SDG implementation capability in teacher education curricula at North-West University, South Africa. The “Environmental Management for Sustainability” module (EDTM 312), which is compulsory for all students enrolled in the education program at North-West University, will be used as a case study. There is a need for higher education to implement and practically integrate SDG goals into their curricula, and one way to achieve this is through the development of competencies. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has the potential to offer approaches that can be useful in the development of capacity-building activities to foster sustainability. The methodological approach adopted is based on a participatory paradigm followed by two cycles and reflection. This paper focuses on systems thinking in practice demonstrating how students apply and reflect on competencies to situations and how praxis captures the actual experiences. The results of this research indicated how to re-orientate the EDTM 312 curriculum to include an environmental justice focus. This research shares practical knowledge of systems thinking as a sustainability competency.

Keywords: education for sustainable development, environmental justice competencies, sustainable development goals, systems thinking in practice

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Authors: Rajoo Balaji, Omar Yaakob

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The Ballast Water Convention requires less than 5% of the world tonnage for ratification. Consequently, ships will have to comply with the requirements. Compliance evaluation and enforcement will become mandatory. Ship owners have to invest in treatment systems and shipboard personnel have to operate them and ensure compliance. The monitoring and enforcement will be the responsibilities of the Administrations. Herein, a review of the current status of the Ballast Water Management and the issues faced by these are projected. Issues range from efficacy and economics of the treatment systems to sampling and testing. Health issues of chemical systems, paucity of data for decision support etc., are other issues. It is emphasized that management of ballast water must be extended to ashore and sustainable solutions must be researched upon. An exemplar treatment system based on ship’s waste heat is also suggested.

Keywords: Ballast Water Management, compliance evaluation, compliance enforcement, sustainability

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Authors: Bing Li

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The primitive code-level design patterns (PDP) are the rudimentary programming elements to develop any distributed systems in the generic distributed programming environment, GreatFree. The PDP works with the primitive distributed application programming interfaces (PDA), the distributed modeling, and the distributed concurrency for scaling-up. They not only hide developers from underlying technical details but also support sufficient adaptability to a variety of distributed computing environments. Programming with them, the simplest distributed system, the lightweight messaging two-node client/server (TNCS) system, is constructed rapidly with straightforward and repeatable behaviors, copy-paste-replace (CPR). As any distributed systems are made up of the simplest ones, those PDAs, as well as the PDP, are generic for distributed programming.

Keywords: primitive APIs, primitive code-level design patterns, generic distributed programming, distributed systems, highly patterned development environment, messaging

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Authors: Adela Mariana Vadastreanu, Adrian Bot, Andreea Maier, Dorin Maier

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This paper approaches the need for innovation management in the context of an existing integrated management system implemented in an organization. The road to success for companies in today’s economic environment is more demanding than ever and the capacity of adapting to the rapid changes is compensatory in order to resist on the market. The managers struggle, daily, with increasingly complex problems, caused by fierce competition in the market but also from the rising demands of customers. Innovation seems to be the solution for these problems. During the last decade almost all companies have been certificated according to various management systems, like quality management system, environmental management system, health and safety management system and others; furthermore many companies have implemented an integrated management system, by integrating two or more management systems. The problem rising today is how to integrate innovation in this integrated management systems. The challenge of the problem is that the development of an innovation management system is in the early phase. In this paper we have studied the possibility of integrating some of the innovation request in an existing management system, we have identify the innovation performance request and we proposed some recommendations regarding innovation management and its implementation as a part of an integrated management system. This paper lies down the bases for developing an model of integration management systems that include innovation as a main part of it. Organizations are becoming more aware of the importance of Integrated Management Systems (IMS). Integrating two or more management systems into an integrated management system can have much advantages.This paper examines various models of management systems integration in accordance with professional references ISO 9001, ISO 18001 and OHSAS 18001, highlighting strengths and weaknesses, creating a basis for future development of integrated management systems, and their involvement in various other processes within the organization, such as innovation management. The more and more demanding economic context emphasizes the awareness of the importance of innovation for organizations. This paper highlights the importance of the innovation for an organization and also gives some practical solution in order to improve the overall success of the business through a better approach of innovation. Various standards have been developed in order to certificate organizations that they respect the requirements. Applying an integrated standards model is shown to be a more effective way then applying the standards independently. The problem that arises is that in order to adopt the integrated version of standards there have to be made some changes at the organizational level. Every change that needs to be done has an effect on its activity, and in this sense the paper tries to deal with the changes needed for adopting an integrated management system and if those changes have an influence over the performance. After the analysis of the results, we can conclude that in order to improve the performance a necessary step is the implementation of innovation in the existing integrated management system.

Keywords: innovation, integrated management systems, innovation management, quality

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Authors: Shabir Ahmad Sofi, Shubham Aggarwal, Sanyam Singhal, Roohie Naaz

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Biometric recognition refers to an automatic recognition of individuals based on a feature vector(s) derived from their physiological and/or behavioral characteristic. Biometric recognition systems should provide a reliable personal recognition schemes to either confirm or determine the identity of an individual. These features are used to provide an authentication for computer based security systems. Applications of such a system include computer systems security, secure electronic banking, mobile phones, credit cards, secure access to buildings, health and social services. By using biometrics a person could be identified based on 'who she/he is' rather than 'what she/he has' (card, token, key) or 'what she/he knows' (password, PIN). In this paper, a brief overview of biometric methods, both unimodal and multimodal and their advantages and disadvantages, will be presented.

Keywords: biometric, DNA, fingerprint, ear, face, retina scan, gait, iris, voice recognition, unimodal biometric, multimodal biometric

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Authors: Saeideh Salimpour, Sophie-Charlotte Viaux, Ahmed Azab, Mohammed Fazle Baki

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The Facility Layout Problem (FLP) is key to the efficient and cost-effective operation of a system. This paper presents a hybrid heuristic- and mathematical-programming-based approach that divides the problem conceptually into those of clustering and sequencing. First, clusters of vertically aligned facilities are formed, which are later on sequenced horizontally. The developed methodology provides promising results in comparison to its counterparts in the literature by minimizing the inter-distances for facilities which have more interactions amongst each other and aims at placing the facilities with more interactions at the centroid of the shop.

Keywords: clustering-sequencing approach, mathematical modeling, optimization, unequal facility layout problem

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Authors: S. Gherbi, F. Bouchareb

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This paper deals with the novel intelligent bio-inspired control strategies, it presents a novel approach based on an optimal fuzzy immune PID parameters tuning, it is a combination of a PID controller, inspired by the human immune mechanism with fuzzy logic. Such controller offers more possibilities to deal with the delayed systems control difficulties due to the delay term. Indeed, we use an optimization approach to tune the four parameters of the controller in addition to the fuzzy function; the obtained controller is implemented in a modified Smith predictor structure, which is well known that it is the most efficient to the control of delayed systems. The application of the presented approach to control a three tank delay system shows good performances and proves the efficiency of the method.

Keywords: delayed systems, fuzzy immune PID, optimization, Smith predictor

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Authors: Vipin Kumar, Girish S. Setlur

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Graphene has been recognized as a promising 2D material with many new properties. However, pristine graphene is gapless which hinders its direct application towards graphene-based semiconducting devices. Graphene is a zero-gapp and linearly dispersing semiconductor. Massless charge carriers (quasi-particles) in graphene obey the relativistic Dirac equation. These Dirac fermions show very unusual physical properties such as electronic, optical and transport. Graphene is analogous to two-level atomic systems and conventional semiconductors. We may expect that graphene-based systems will also exhibit phenomena that are well-known in two-level atomic systems and in conventional semiconductors. Rabi oscillation is a nonlinear optical phenomenon well-known in the context of two-level atomic systems and also in conventional semiconductors. It is the periodic exchange of energy between the system of interest and the electromagnetic field. The present work describes the phenomenon of Rabi oscillations in graphene based systems. Rabi oscillations have already been described theoretically and experimentally in the extensive literature available on this topic. To describe Rabi oscillations they use an approximation known as rotating wave approximation (RWA) well-known in studies of two-level systems. RWA is valid only near conventional resonance (small detuning)- when the frequency of the external field is nearly equal to the particle-hole excitation frequency. The Rabi frequency goes through a minimum close to conventional resonance as a function of detuning. Far from conventional resonance, the RWA becomes rather less useful and we need some other technique to describe the phenomenon of Rabi oscillation. In conventional systems, there is no second minimum - the only minimum is at conventional resonance. But in graphene we find anomalous Rabi oscillations far from conventional resonance where the Rabi frequency goes through a minimum that is much smaller than the conventional Rabi frequency. This is known as anomalous Rabi frequency and is unique to graphene systems. We have shown that this is attributable to the pseudo-spin degree of freedom in graphene systems. A new technique, which is an alternative to RWA called asymptotic RWA (ARWA), has been invoked by our group to discuss the phenomenon of Rabi oscillation. Experimentally accessible current density shows different types of threshold behaviour in frequency domain close to the anomalous Rabi frequency depending on the system chosen. For single layer graphene, the exponent at threshold is equal to 1/2 while in case of bilayer graphene, it is computed to be equal to 1. Bilayer graphene shows harmonic (anomalous) resonances absent in single layer graphene. The effect of asymmetry and trigonal warping (a weak direct inter-layer hopping in bilayer graphene) on these oscillations is also studied in graphene systems. Asymmetry has a remarkable effect only on anomalous Rabi oscillations whereas the Rabi frequency near conventional resonance is not significantly affected by the asymmetry parameter. In presence of asymmetry, these graphene systems show Rabi-like oscillations (offset oscillations) even for vanishingly small applied field strengths (less than the gap parameter). The frequency of offset oscillations may be identified with the asymmetry parameter.

Keywords: graphene, Bilayer graphene, Rabi oscillations, Dirac fermion systems

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Authors: Jesus Kombaya, Nadia Hamani, Lyes Kermad

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The preservation of a company’s place on the market in such aggressive competition is becoming a survival challenge for manufacturers. In this context, survivors are only those who succeed to satisfy their customers’ needs as quickly as possible. The production system should be endowed with a certain level of flexibility to eliminate or reduce the rigidity of the production systems in order to facilitate the conversion and/or the change of system’s features to produce different products. Therefore, it is essential to guarantee the quality, the speed and the flexibility to survive in this competition. According to literature, this adaptability is referred to as the notion of "change". Indeed, companies are trying to establish a more flexible and agile manufacturing system through several reconfiguration actions. Reconfiguration contributes to the extension of the manufacturing system life cycle by modifying its physical, organizational and computer characteristics according to the changing market conditions. Reconfigurability is characterized by six key elements that are: modularity, integrability, diagnosability, convertibility, scalability and customization. In order to control the production systems, it is essential for manufacturers to make good use of this capability in order to be sure that the system has an optimal and adapted level of reconfigurability that allows it to produce in accordance with the set requirements. This document develops a measure of customization of reconfigurable production systems. These measures do not only impact the production system but also impact the product design and the process design, which can therefore serve as a guide for the customization of manufactured product. A case study is presented to show the use of the proposed approach.

Keywords: reconfigurable manufacturing systems, customization, measure, flexibility

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Authors: Mohamed S. Selim, Nesreen A. Fatthallah, Shimaa A. Higazy, Zhifeng Hao, Ping Jing Mo

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As marine fouling-release (FR) surfaces, two new superhydrophobic nanocomposite series of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) loaded with reduced graphene oxide (RGO) and graphene oxide/boehmite nanorods (GO-γ-AlOOH) nanofillers were created. The self-cleaning and antifouling capabilities were modified by controlling the nanofillers' shapes and distribution in the silicone matrix. With an average diameter of 10-20 nm and a length of 200 nm, γ-AlOOH nanorods showed a single crystallinity. RGO was made using a hydrothermal process, whereas GO-γ-AlOOH nanocomposites were made using a chemical deposition method for use as fouling-release coating materials. These nanofillers were disseminated in the silicone matrix using the solution casting method to explore the synergetic effects of graphene-based materials on the surface, mechanical, and FR characteristics. Water contact angle (WCA), scanning electron, and atomic force microscopes were used to investigate the surface's hydrophobicity and antifouling capabilities (SEM and AFM). The roughness, superhydrophobicity, and surface mechanical characteristics of coatings all increased the homogeneity of the nanocomposite dispersion. To examine the antifouling effects of the coating systems, laboratory tests were conducted for 30 days using specified bacteria.PDMS/GO-γ-AlOOH nanorod composite demonstrated superior antibacterial efficacy against several bacterial strains than PDMS/RGO nanocomposite. The high surface area and stabilizing effects of the GO-γ-AlOOH hybrid nanofillers are to blame for this. The biodegradability percentage of the PDMS/GO-γ-AlOOH nanorod composite (3 wt.%) was the lowest (1.6%), while the microbial endurability percentages for gram-positive, gram-negative, and fungi were 86.42%, 97.94%, and 85.97%, respectively. The homogeneity of the GO-γ-AlOOH (3 wt.%) dispersion, which had a WCA of 151° and a rough surface, was the most profound superhydrophobic antifouling nanostructured coating.

Keywords: superhydrophobic nanocomposite, fouling release, nanofillers, surface coating

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Authors: C. Patrascioiu

Abstract:

The paper describes the modeling and simulation of the heat pumps domain processes. The main objective of the study is the use of the heat pump in propene–propane distillation processes. The modeling and simulation instrument is the Unisim^® Design simulator. The paper is structured in three parts: An overview of the compressing gases, the modeling and simulation of the freezing systems, and the modeling and simulation of the heat pumps. For each of these systems, there are presented the Unisim^® Design simulation diagrams, the input–output system structure and the numerical results. Future studies will consider modeling and simulation of the propene–propane distillation process with heat pump.

Keywords: distillation, heat pump, simulation, unisim design

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Authors: Heide Imai

Abstract:

The paper will introduce and discuss specific examples of urban practices which take place within the dynamic urban landscape of contemporary Tokyo. The rising interest and importance of derelict places as resilient and creative clusters will be analysed, before relating this to the rediscovery of small urban niches and the emergence of different forms of social entrepreneurs. Secondly, two different case study areas will be introduced before discussing different forms of hybrid lifestyles, social micro scale enterprises and social innovations, understanding the concept of ‘small places of resilience’ as zones of human interaction, desire and care in which spontaneous practices take place.

Keywords: entrepreneurship, social innovation, Tokyo, urban regeneration

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Authors: Robert Höttger, Lukas Krawczyk, Burkhard Igel

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This paper introduces novel approaches to partitioning and mapping in terms of model-based embedded multicore system engineering and further discusses benefits, industrial relevance and features in common with existing approaches. In order to assess and evaluate results, both approaches have been applied to a real industrial application as well as to various prototypical demonstrative applications, that have been developed and implemented for different purposes. Evaluations show, that such applications improve significantly according to performance, energy efficiency, meeting timing constraints and covering maintaining issues by using the AMALTHEA platform and the implemented approaches. Further- more, the model-based design provides an open, expandable, platform independent and scalable exchange format between OEMs, suppliers and developers on different levels. Our proposed mechanisms provide meaningful multicore system utilization since load balancing by means of partitioning and mapping is effectively performed with regard to the modeled systems including hardware, software, operating system, scheduling, constraints, configuration and more data.

Keywords: partitioning, mapping, distributed systems, scheduling, embedded multicore systems, model-based, system analysis

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Authors: Pouyan Jahanbin, Mahmoud Houshmand, Omid Fatahi Valilai

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A flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is a manufacturing system having the capability of handling the variations of products features that is the result of ever-changing customer demands. The flexibility of the manufacturing systems help to utilize the resources in a more effective manner. However, the control of such systems would be complicated and challenging. FMS needs CNC machines and robots and other resources for establishing the flexibility and enhancing the efficiency of the whole system. Also it needs to integrate the resources to reach required efficiency and flexibility. In order to reach this goal, an integrator framework is proposed in which the machining data of CNC machine tools is received through a STEP-NC file. The interoperability of the system is achieved by the information system. This paper proposes an information system that its data model is designed based on object oriented approach and is implemented through a knowledge-based system. The framework is connected to a database which is filled with robot’s control commands. The framework programs the robots by rules embedded in its knowledge based system. It also controls the interactions of CNC machine tools for loading and unloading actions by robot. As a result, the proposed framework improves the integration of manufacturing resources in Flexible Manufacturing Systems.

Keywords: CNC machine tools, industrial robots, knowledge-based systems, manufacturing recourses integration, flexible manufacturing system (FMS), object-oriented data model

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Authors: Slavica P. Petrovic

Abstract:

One of the key dimensions of management problems in organizations refers to the relations between stakeholders. The management problems that are characterized by conflict and coercion, in which participants do not agree on the ends and means, in which different groups, i.e., individuals, strive to – using the power they have – impose on others their favoured strategy and decisions represent the relevant research subject. Creatively managing the coercive problems in organizations, in which the sources of power can be identified, implies the emancipatory paradigm and the use of corresponding systems methodology. The main research aim is to critically reassess the theoretical foundations and methodological and methodical development of Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) – as a valid representative of the emancipatory paradigm – in order to determine the conditions, ways, and achievements of its application in managing the coercive problems in organizations. The basic hypothesis is that CSH, as the emancipatory methodology, given its own theoretical foundations and methodological-methodical development, can be employed in a scientifically based and practically useful manner in creative addressing the coercive problems. The scientific instrumentarium corresponding to this research aim is critical systems thinking with its three key commitments to: a) Critical awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of each research instrument (theory, methodology, method, technique, model) for structuring the problem situations in organizations, b) Improvement of managing the coercive problems in organizations, and c) Pluralism – respect the different perceptions and interpretations of problem situations, and enable the combined use of research instruments. The relevant research result is that CSH – considering its theoretical foundations, methodological and methodical development – enables to reveal the normative content of the proposed or existing designs of organizational systems. Accordingly, it can be concluded that through the use of critically heuristic categories and dialectical debate between those involved and those affected by the designs, but who are not included in designing organizational systems, CSH endeavours to – in the application – support the process of improving position of all stakeholders.

Keywords: coercion and conflict in organizations, creative management, critical systems heuristics, the emancipatory systems methodology

Procedia PDF Downloads 445