Search results for: Eurozone periphery

Authors: Djeddi Mabrouk

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The slow coming together between the Afro-Eurasia plates seems to be the main cause of the active deformation in the whole of North Africa which in consequence come true in Algeria with a large zone of deformation in an enough large limited band, southern through Saharan atlas and northern through tell atlas. Maghrebin and Atlassian Chain along North Africa are the consequence of this convergence. In junction zone, we have noticed a compressive regime NW-SE with a creases-faults structure and structured overthrust. From a geological point of view the north part of Algeria is younger then Saharan platform, it’s changing so unstable and constantly in movement, it’s characterized by creases openly reversed, overthrusts and reversed faults, and undergo perpetually complex movement vertically and horizontally. On structural level the north of Algeria it's a part of erogenous alpine peri-Mediterranean and essentially the tertiary age It’s spread from east to the west of Algeria over 1200 km.This oogenesis is extended from east to west on broadband of 100 km.The alpine chain is shaped by 3 domains: tell atlas in north, high plateaus in mid and Saharan atlas in the south In extreme south we find the Saharan platform which is made of Precambrian bedrock recovered by Paleozoic practically not deformed. The Algerian north and the Saharan platform are separated by an important accident along of 2000km from Agadir (Morocco) to Gabes (Tunisian). The seismic activity is localized essentially in a coastal band in the north of Algeria shaped by tell atlas, high plateaus, Saharan atlas. Earthquakes are limited in the first 20km of the earth's crust; they are caused by movements along faults of inverted orientation NE-SW or sliding tectonic plates. The center region characterizes Strong Earthquake Activity who locates mainly in the basin of Mitidja (age Neogene).The southern periphery (Atlas Blidéen) constitutes the June, more Important seism genic sources in the city of Algiers and east (Boumerdes region). The North East Region is also part of the tellian area, but it is characterized by a different strain in other parts of northern Algeria. The deformation is slow and low to moderate seismic activity. Seismic activity is related to the tectonic-slip earthquake. The most pronounced is that of 27 October 1985 (Constantine) of seismic moment magnitude Mw = 5.9. North-West region is quite active and also artificial seismic hypocenters which do not exceed 20km. The deep seismicity is concentrated mainly a narrow strip along the edge of Quaternary and Neogene basins Intra Mountains along the coast. The most violent earthquakes in this region are the earthquake of Oran in 1790 and earthquakes Orléansville (El Asnam in 1954 and 1980).

Keywords: alpine chain, seismicity north Algeria, earthquakes in Algeria, geophysics, Earth

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Authors: Soumya Awasthi

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The spread of radical ideology is possible not merely through public meetings, protests, and mosques but even in schools, seminaries, and madrasas. The rhetoric created around the relationship between religion and conflict has been the primary factor for instigating global conflicts – when religion is used to achieve broader objectives. There have been numerous cases of religion-driven conflict around the world be it the Jewish revolt between 66 AD and 628 AD or the 1119 AD the Crusades revolt or during the Cold War period or the rise of right-wing politics in India. Some of the major developments which reiterate the significance of religion in the contemporary times include: (1) The emergence of theocracy in Iran in 1979 (2) Resurgence of world-wide religious beliefs in post-Soviet space. (3) Emergence of transnational terrorism shaped by twisted depiction of Islam by the self proclaimed protectors of the religion. Therefore this paper is premised in the argument that religion has always found itself on the periphery of the discipline of International Relations (IR), and has received less attention than it deserves. The focus of the topic is on the discourses of ‘Deobandi’ and its impact both on the geopolitics of the region- particularly in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan- and also at the global level. Discourse is a mechanism in use since time immemorial and has been a key tool to mobilise masses against the ruling authority. With the help of field surveys, qualitative and analytical method of research in religion and international relations, it has been found that they are numerous madrassas that are running illegally and are unregistered. These seminaries are operating in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, relation between religion and geopolitics was highlighted when there was a sudden spread of radical ideas, finding support from countries like Saudi Arabia (who funded the campaign) and Pakistan (which organised the Saudi funds and set up training camps, both educational and military). During this period there was a huge influence of Wahabi theology on the madrasas which started with Deoband philosophy and later became a mix of Wahabi (influenced by Ahmad Ibn Hannabal and Ibn Taimmiya) and Deobandi philosophy, tending towards fundamentalism. Later the impact of regional geopolitics had influence on the global geopolitics when the incidents like attack on the US in 2001, bomb blasts in U.K, Indonesia, Turkey, and Israel in 2000s. In the midst of all this, there were several scholars who pointed towards Deobandi Philosophy as one of the drivers in the creation of armed Islamic groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan. Hence this paper will make an attempt to understand the trend as to how Deobandi religious discourses originating from India have changed over the decades, and who the agents of such changes are. It will throw light on Deoband from pre-independence till date to create a narrative around the religious discourses and Deobandi philosophy and its spill over impact on the map of global and regional security.

Keywords: Deobandi School of Thought, radicalization, regional and global geopolitics, religious discourses, Whabi movement

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Authors: Britt Erni, Aldara Vazquez Fernandez, Roland Maurer

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Visuospatial perspective taking (VSPT) is a process that allows to integrate spatial information from different points of view, and to transform the mental images we have of the environment to properly orient our movements and anticipate the location of landmarks during navigation. VSPT is also related to egocentric perspective transformations (imagined rotations or translations of one's point of view) and to infer the visuospatial experiences of another person (e.g. if and how another person sees objects). This process is deeply related to a wide-ranging capacity called the theory of mind (ToM), an essential cognitive function that allows us to regulate our social behaviour by attributing mental representations to individuals in order to make behavioural predictions. VSPT is often considered in the literature as the starting point of the development of the theory of mind. VSPT and ToM include several levels of knowledge that have to be assessed by specific tasks. Unfortunately, the lack of tasks assessing these functions in clinical neuropsychology leads to underestimate, in brain-damaged patients, deficits of these functions which are essential, in everyday life, to regulate our social behaviour (ToM) and to navigate in known and unknown environments (VSPT). Therefore, this study aims to create and standardize a VSPT task in order to explore the cognitive requirements of VSPT and ToM, and to specify their relationship in healthy adults and thereafter in brain-damaged patients. Two versions of a computerized VSPT task were administered to healthy participants (M = 28.18, SD = 4.8 years). In both versions the environment was a 3D representation of 10 different geometric shapes placed on a circular base. Two sets of eight pictures were generated from this: of the environment with an avatar somewhere on its periphery (locations) and of what the avatar sees from that place (views). Two types of questions were asked: a) identify the location from the view, and b) identify the view from the location. Twenty participants completed version 1 of the task and 20 completed the second version, where the views were offset by ±15° (i.e., clockwise or counterclockwise) and participants were asked to choose the closest location or the closest view. The preliminary findings revealed that version 1 is significantly easier than version 2 for accuracy (with ceiling scores for version 1). In version 2, participants responded significantly slower when they had to infer the avatar's view from the latter's location, probably because they spent more time visually exploring the different views (responses). Furthermore, men significantly performed better than women in version 1 but not in version 2. Most importantly, a sensitive task (version 2) has been created for which the participants do not seem to easily and automatically compute what someone is looking at yet which does not involve more heavily other cognitive functions. This study is further completed by including analysis on non-clinical participants with low and high degrees of schizotypy, different socio-educational status, and with a range of older adults to examine age-related and other differences in VSPT processing.

Keywords: mental transformation, spatial cognition, theory of mind, visuospatial perspective taking

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Authors: Zeradam Yeshiwas, A. Krishnaia

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The aim of this study is to verify the resulting surface roughness of parts formed by the Single-Point Incremental Forming (SPIF) process for an ISO 3574 Drawing Quality Cold Rolled CR2 Steel. The chemical composition of drawing quality Cold Rolled CR2 steel is comprised of 0.12 percent of carbon, 0.5 percent of manganese, 0.035 percent of sulfur, 0.04 percent phosphorous, and the remaining percentage is iron with negligible impurities. The experiments were performed on a 3-axis vertical CNC milling machining center equipped with a tool setup comprising a fixture and forming tools specifically designed and fabricated for the process. The CNC milling machine was used to transfer the tool path code generated in Mastercam 2017 environment into three-dimensional motions by the linear incremental progress of the spindle. The blanks of Drawing Quality Cold Rolled CR2 steel sheets of 1 mm of thickness have been fixed along their periphery by a fixture and hardened high-speed steel (HSS) tools with a hemispherical tip of 8, 10 and 12mm of diameter were employed to fabricate sample parts. To investigate the surface roughness, hyperbolic-cone shape specimens were fabricated based on the chosen experimental design. The effect of process parameters on the surface roughness was studied using three important process parameters, i.e., tool diameter, feed rate, and step depth. In this study, the Taylor-Hobson Surtronic 3+ surface roughness tester profilometer was used to determine the surface roughness of the parts fabricated using the arithmetic mean deviation (Rₐ). In this instrument, a small tip is dragged across a surface while its deflection is recorded. Finally, the optimum process parameters and the main factor affecting surface roughness were found using the Taguchi design of the experiment and ANOVA. A Taguchi experiment design with three factors and three levels for each factor, the standard orthogonal array L9 (3³) was selected for the study using the array selection table. The lowest value of surface roughness is significant for surface roughness improvement. For this objective, the ‘‘smaller-the-better’’ equation was used for the calculation of the S/N ratio. The finishing roughness parameter Ra has been measured for the different process combinations. The arithmetic means deviation (Rₐ) was measured via the experimental design for each combination of the control factors by using Taguchi experimental design. Four roughness measurements were taken for a single component and the average roughness was taken to optimize the surface roughness. The lowest value of Rₐ is very important for surface roughness improvement. For this reason, the ‘‘smaller-the-better’’ Equation was used for the calculation of the S/N ratio. Analysis of the effect of each control factor on the surface roughness was performed with a ‘‘S/N response table’’. Optimum surface roughness was obtained at a feed rate of 1500 mm/min, with a tool radius of 12 mm, and with a step depth of 0.5 mm. The ANOVA result shows that step depth is an essential factor affecting surface roughness (91.1 %).

Keywords: incremental forming, SPIF, drawing quality steel, surface roughness, roughness behavior

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Authors: Emily Moskwa, Delene Weber, Jacob Arnold, Guy M. Robinson, Douglas K. Bardsley

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Management strategies to reduce the risks to human life and property from wildfire are key contemporary concerns, with a growing literature exploring these issues from a social research perspective. Efforts range from narrowly focused examinations, such as comparing the level of community support for vegetation clearance with that of controlled burning, to broader considerations of what constitutes effective fire management policy and education campaigns. However, little analysis is available that integrates the social component of risk mitigation and the influence of educational materials with the biodiversity conservation strategies so often needed in fire-prone ecosystems found on the periphery of urban areas. Indeed many communities living on the fringe of Australian cities face major issues relating to an increased risk of wildfire events and a decline in local biodiversity. Inadequate policy and planning, and a lack of awareness or information, exacerbate this risk. This has brought forward an emerging governance challenge that requires the mitigation of wildfire risk while simultaneously supporting improved conservation practices in these urban-fringe areas. Focusing on the perceptions and experiences of residents of the Lower Eyre Peninsula in South Australia, this study analyses data collected from a series of semi-structured interviews with landholders (n=20) living in rural and urban-fringe areas surrounding the city of Port Lincoln, a city with a growing population and one that has faced a number of very large fires in recent years. In South Australia, new policies have assigned increased responsibility on individual landholders to manage their land and prepare themselves for a wildfire event, potentially to the detriment of the surrounding native vegetation. Our findings indicate the value of gaining a more nuanced understanding of the perceptions and behaviours of landholders living in areas of high fire risk, who often choose to live there in order to be close to the natural environment. Many interviewees demonstrated a high awareness of wildfire risk as a result of their past experience with fire, and the majority considered themselves to be well-prepared in the event of a future fire. Community interactions and educational programs were found to be effective in raising awareness of risk; however, negative trust relationships with government authorities and low exposure to information concerning biodiversity resulted in an overall misunderstanding of the relationship between risk mitigation and biodiversity protection. The study offers insights into how catastrophic fires are reframing perceptions of what constitutes effective vegetation management. It provides recommendations to assist with the development of education strategies that concurrently address wildfire management and biodiversity conservation, and contribute towards environmentally-informed and risk conscious governance.

Keywords: biodiversity conservation, risk, peri-urban planning, wildfire management

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Authors: Anele Horn, Amanda Van Eeden

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The emphasis on the challenges posed by continued urbanisation, especially in developing countries has resulted in urban sprawl often researched and analysed in metropolitan urban areas, but rarely in small and medium towns. Consequently, there exists no comparative instrument between the proportional extent of urban sprawl in metropolitan areas measured against that of small and medium towns. This research proposes an Urban Sprawl Index as a possible tool to comparatively analyse the extent of urban sprawl between cities and towns of different sizes. The index can also be used over the longer term by authorities developing spatial policy to track the success or failure of specific tools intended to curb urban sprawl. In South Africa, as elsewhere in the world, the last two decades witnessed a proliferation of legislation and spatial policies to limit urban sprawl and contain the physical expansion and development of urban areas, but the measurement of the successes or failures of these instruments intending to curb expansive land development has remained a largely unattainable goal, largely as a result of the absence of an appropriate measure of proportionate comparison. As a result of the spatial political history of Apartheid, urban areas acquired a spatial form that contributed to the formation of single-core cities with far reaching and wide-spreading peripheral development, either in the form of affluent suburbs or as a result of post-Apartheid programmes such as the Reconstruction and Development Programme (1995) which, in an attempt to assist the immediate housing shortage, favoured the establishment of single dwelling residential units for low income communities on single plots on affordable land at the urban periphery. This invariably contributed to urban sprawl and even though this programme has since been abandoned, the trend towards low density residential development continues. The research area is the Western Cape Province in South Africa, which in all aspects exhibit the spatial challenges described above. In academia and popular media the City of Cape Town (the only Metropolitan authority in the province) has received the lion’s share of focus in terms of critique on urban development and spatial planning, however, the smaller towns and cities in the Western Cape arguably received much less public attention and were spared the naming and shaming of being unsustainable urban areas in terms of land consumption and physical expansion. The Urban Sprawl Index for the Western Cape (USIWC) put forward by this research enables local authorities in the Western Cape Province to measure the extent of urban sprawl proportionately and comparatively to other cities in the province, thereby acquiring a means of measuring the success of the spatial instruments employed to limit urban expansion and inefficient land consumption. In development of the USIWC the research made use of satellite data for reference years 2001 and 2011 and population growth data extracted from the national census, also for base years 2001 and 2011.

Keywords: urban sprawl, index, Western Cape, South Africa

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Authors: Hongmei Wang, Ziyun Xiang, Ying liu, Li Yu, Dongsheng Yue

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Intro: The COVID-19 (Corona Virus Disease 2019) has greatly changed the global economic, political and financial ecology. The mutation of the coronavirus in the UK in December 2020 has brought new panic to the world. Deep learning was performed on Chest Computed tomography (CT) of COVID-19 and Influenza and describes their characteristics. The predominant features of COVID-19 pneumonia was ground-glass opacification, followed by consolidation. Lesion density: most lesions appear as ground-glass shadows, and some lesions coexist with solid lesions. Lesion distribution: the focus is mainly on the dorsal side of the periphery of the lung, with the lower lobe of the lungs as the focus, and it is often close to the pleura. Other features it has are grid-like shadows in ground glass lesions, thickening signs of diseased vessels, air bronchi signs and halo signs. The severe disease involves whole bilateral lungs, showing white lung signs, air bronchograms can be seen, and there can be a small amount of pleural effusion in the bilateral chest cavity. At the same time, this year's flu season could be near its peak after surging throughout the United States for months. Chest CT for Influenza infection is characterized by focal ground glass shadows in the lungs, with or without patchy consolidation, and bronchiole air bronchograms are visible in the concentration. There are patchy ground-glass shadows, consolidation, air bronchus signs, mosaic lung perfusion, etc. The lesions are mostly fused, which is prominent near the hilar and two lungs. Grid-like shadows and small patchy ground-glass shadows are visible. Deep neural networks have great potential in image analysis and diagnosis that traditional machine learning algorithms do not. Method: Aiming at the two major infectious diseases COVID-19 and influenza, which are currently circulating in the world, the chest CT of patients with two infectious diseases is classified and diagnosed using deep learning algorithms. The residual network is proposed to solve the problem of network degradation when there are too many hidden layers in a deep neural network (DNN). The proposed deep residual system (ResNet) is a milestone in the history of the Convolutional neural network (CNN) images, which solves the problem of difficult training of deep CNN models. Many visual tasks can get excellent results through fine-tuning ResNet. The pre-trained convolutional neural network ResNet is introduced as a feature extractor, eliminating the need to design complex models and time-consuming training. Fastai is based on Pytorch, packaging best practices for in-depth learning strategies, and finding the best way to handle diagnoses issues. Based on the one-cycle approach of the Fastai algorithm, the classification diagnosis of lung CT for two infectious diseases is realized, and a higher recognition rate is obtained. Results: A deep learning model was developed to efficiently identify the differences between COVID-19 and influenza using chest CT.

Keywords: COVID-19, Fastai, influenza, transfer network

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Authors: Aditya Purohit, Neha Bansal

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Unplanned urbanization and multidirectional sprawl of the cities have resulted in increased motorization and deteriorating transport conditions like traffic congestion, longer commuting, pollution, increased carbon footprint, and above all increased fatalities. In order to overcome these problems, various practices have been adopted including– promoting and implementing mass transport; traffic junction channelization; smart transport etc. However, these methods are found to be primarily focusing on vehicular mobility rather than people accessibility. With this research gap, this paper tries to resolve the mobility issues for Ahmedabad city in India, which being the economic capital Gujarat state has a huge commuter and visitor inflow. This research aims to resolve the traffic congestion and urban mobility issues focusing on Gujarat State Regional Transport Corporation (GSRTC) for the city of Ahmadabad by analyzing the existing operations and network structure of GSRTC followed by finding possibilities of integrating it with other modes of urban transport. The network restructuring (NR) methodology is used with appropriate variations, based on commuter demand and growth pattern of the city. To do these ‘scenarios’ based on priority issues (using 12 parameters) and their best possible solution, are established after route network analysis for 2700 population sample of 20 traffic junctions/nodes across the city. Approximately 5% sample (of passenger inflow) at each node is considered using random stratified sampling technique two scenarios are – Scenario 1: Resolving mobility issues by use of Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) in joint venture to GSRTC and Private Operators for establishing feeder service, which shall provide a transfer service for passenger for movement from inner city area to identified peripheral terminals; and Scenario 2: Augmenting existing mass transport services such as BRTS and AMTS for using them as feeder service to the identified peripheral terminals. Each of these has now been analyzed for the best suitability/feasibility in network restructuring. A desire-line diagram is constructed using this analysis which indicated that on an average 62% of designated GSRTC routes are overlapping with mass transportation service routes of BRTS and AMTS in the city. This has resulted in duplication of bus services causing traffic congestion especially in the Central Bus Station (CBS). Terminating GSRTC services on the periphery of the city is found to be the best restructuring network proposal. This limits the GSRTC buses at city fringe area and prevents them from entering into the city core areas. These end-terminals of GSRTC are integrated with BRTS and AMTS services which help in segregating intra-state and inter-state bus services. The research concludes that absence of integrated multimodal transport network resulted in complexity of transport access to the commuters. As a further scope of research comparing and understanding of value of access time in total travel time and its implication on generalized cost on trip and how it varies city wise may be taken up.

Keywords: mass transportation, multi-modal integration, network restructuring, travel behavior, urban transport

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Authors: Md. Nurul Alom Siddikqe

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The purpose of this intervention was to describe how the marginalized people protect their rights and increase their self-dignity and self-esteem among brothel-based sex workers in 6 cities which are the victim of trafficked who came from different periphery areas Bangladesh. Eventually the sex workers are tortured by the pimp, clients, Msahi (so called guardian of bonded sex workers), Babu (So called husband) highly discriminated, vulnerable and stigmatized due to their occupation, movement, behavior and activities, which has got social disapproval. However, stigma, discrimination and violation of human rights not only bar them to access legal services, education of their kids, health, movement of outside of brothel, deprived of funeral after death, but also make them inaccessible due to their invisibility. Conducted an assessment among brothel-based sex workers setup to know their knowledge on human rights and find out their harassment and violence in their community. Inspired them to think about to be united and also assisted them to formation of self help group (SHG). Developed capacity of the SHG and developed leadership of its members through different trainings like administrative, financial management, public speaking and resource mobilization. Developed strategy to enhance the capacity of SHG so that they can collectively claim their rights and develop strategic partnership and network with the relevant service provider’s for restoring all sorts of rights. Conducted meeting with stakeholder including duty bearers, civil society organizations, media people and local government initiatives. Developed Networking with human rights commission, local elite, religious leaders and form human right watch committees at community level. Organized rally and observed national and international days along with government counterparts. By utilizing the project resources the members of SHG became capable to raise their collective voices against violence, discrimination and stigma as well as protected them from insecurity. The members of SHG have been participating in social program/event the SHG got membership of district level NGO coordination meeting through invitation from Deputy Commissioner, Civil Surgeon and Social welfare office of Government of Bangladesh. The Law Enforcement Agency is ensuring safety and security and the education department of government enrolled their children in primary level education. The Government provided land for grave yard after death for the Muslim sex workers and same for the other religious group. The SHGs are registered with government respective authorities. The SHGs are working with support from different development partners and implementing different projects sometime as consortium leaders. Opportunity created to take the vocational training from the government reputed department. The harassment by the clients reduced remarkably, babu, Mashi and other counterparts recognized the sex workers rights and ensure security with government counterpart access increased in legal, health and education. Indications are that the brothel based sex workers understood about their rights and became capable of ensuring their security through working under the self-help groups meaningfully.

Keywords: brothel, discrimination, harassment, stigma

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Authors: Michael Picard

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This proposal offers to shed light on the changing legal geography of the global waste economy. Global waste recycling has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. NASDAQ predicts the emergence of a worldwide 1,296G$ waste management market between 2017 and 2022. Underlining this evolution, a new generation of preferential waste-trade agreements has emerged in the Pacific. In the last decade, Japan has concluded a series of bilateral treaties with Asian countries, and most recently with China. An agreement between Tokyo and Beijing was formalized on 7 May 2008, which forged an economic partnership on waste transfer and mining. The agreement set up International Recycling Zones, where certified recycling plants in China process industrial waste imported from Japan. Under the joint venture, Chinese companies salvage the embedded value from Japanese industrial discards, reprocess them and send them back to Japanese manufacturers, such as Mitsubishi and Panasonic. This circular economy is designed to convert surplus garbage into surplus value. Ever since the opening of Sino-Japanese eco-parks, millions of tons of plastic and e-waste have been exported from Japan to China every year. Yet, quite unexpectedly, China has recently closed its waste market to imports, jeopardizing Japan’s billion-dollar exports to China. China notified the WTO that, by the end of 2017, it would no longer accept imports of plastics and certain metals. Given China’s share of Japanese waste exports, a complete closure of China’s market would require Japan to find new uses for its recyclable industrial trash generated domestically every year. It remains to be seen how China will effectively implement its ban on waste imports, considering the economic interests at stake. At this stage, what remains to be clarified is whether China's ban on waste imports will negatively affect the recycling trade between Japan and China. What is clear, though, is the rapid transformation in the legal geography of waste mining in East-Asia. For decades, East-Asian waste trade had been tied up in an ‘ecologically unequal exchange’ between the Japanese core and the Chinese periphery. This global unequal waste distribution could be measured by the Environmental Stringency Index, which revealed that waste regulation was 39% weaker in the Global South than in Japan. This explains why Japan could legally export its hazardous plastic and electronic discards to China. The asymmetric flow of hazardous waste between Japan and China carried the colonial heritage of international law. The legal geography of waste distribution was closely associated to the imperial construction of an ecological trade imbalance between the Japanese source and the Chinese sink. Thus, China’s recent decision to ban hazardous waste imports is a sign of a broader ecological shift. As a global economic superpower, China announced to the world it would no longer be the planet’s junkyard. The policy change will have profound consequences on the global circulation of waste, re-routing global waste towards countries south of China, such as Vietnam and Malaysia. By the time the Berlin Conference takes place in May 2018, the presentation will be able to assess more accurately the effect of the Chinese ban on the transboundary movement of waste in Asia.

Keywords: Asia, ecological unequal exchange, global waste trade, legal geography

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Authors: Bijit Kalita, K. V. N. Surendra

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The pulley works under both compressive loading due to contacting belt in tension and central torque due to cause rotation. In a power transmission system, the belt pulley assemblies offer a contact problem in the form of two mating cylindrical parts. In this work, we modeled a pulley as a heavy two-dimensional circular disk. Stress analysis due to contact loading in the pulley mechanism is performed. Finite element analysis (FEA) is conducted for a pulley to investigate the stresses experienced on its inner and outer periphery. In most of the heavy-duty applications, most frequently used mechanisms to transmit power in applications such as automotive engines, industrial machines, etc. is Belt Drive. Usually, very heavy circular disks are used as pulleys. A pulley could be entitled as a drum and may have a groove between two flanges around the circumference. A rope, belt, cable or chain can be the driving element of a pulley system that runs over the pulley inside the groove. A pulley is experienced by normal and shear tractions on its contact region in the process of motion transmission. The region may be belt-pulley contact surface or pulley-shaft contact surface. In 1895, Hertz solved the elastic contact problem for point contact and line contact of an ideal smooth object. Afterward, this hypothesis is generally utilized for computing the actual contact zone. Detailed stress analysis in such contact region of such pulleys is quite necessary to prevent early failure. In this paper, the results of the finite element analyses carried out on the compressed disk of a belt pulley arrangement using fracture mechanics concepts are shown. Based on the literature on contact stress problem induced in the wide field of applications, generated stress distribution on the shaft-pulley and belt-pulley interfaces due to the application of high-tension and torque was evaluated in this study using FEA concepts. Finally, the results obtained from ANSYS (APDL) were compared with the Hertzian contact theory. The study is mainly focused on the fatigue life estimation of a rotating part as a component of an engine assembly using the most famous Paris equation. Digital Image Correlation (DIC) analyses have been performed using the open-source software. From the displacement computed using the images acquired at a minimum and maximum force, displacement field amplitude is computed. From these fields, the crack path is defined and stress intensity factors and crack tip position are extracted. A non-linear least-squares projection is used for the purpose of the estimation of fatigue crack growth. Further study will be extended for the various application of rotating machinery such as rotating flywheel disk, jet engine, compressor disk, roller disk cutter etc., where Stress Intensity Factor (SIF) calculation plays a significant role on the accuracy and reliability of a safe design. Additionally, this study will be progressed to predict crack propagation in the pulley using maximum tangential stress (MTS) criteria for mixed mode fracture.

Keywords: crack-tip deformations, contact stress, stress concentration, stress intensity factor

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Authors: Alexandra Steed

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Alexandra Steed URBAN was commissioned to undertake the South Essex Green and Blue Infrastructure Study (SEGBI) on behalf of the Association of South Essex Local Authorities (ASELA): a partnership of seven neighboring councils within the Thames Estuary. Located on London’s doorstep, the 70,000-hectare region is under extraordinary pressure for regeneration, further development, and economic expansion, yet faces extreme challenges: sea-level rise and inadequate flood defenses, stormwater flooding and threatened infrastructure, loss of internationally important habitats, significant existing community deprivation, and lack of connectivity and access to green space. The brief was to embrace these challenges in the creation of a document that would form a key part of ASELA’s Joint Strategic Framework and feed into local plans and master plans. Thus, helping to tackle climate change, ecological collapse, and social inequity at a regional scale whilst creating a relationship and awareness between urban communities and the surrounding landscapes and nature. The SEGBI project applied a ‘land-based’ methodology, combined with a co-design approach involving numerous stakeholders, to explore how living infrastructure can address these significant issues, reshape future planning and development, and create thriving places for the whole community of life. It comprised three key stages, including Baseline Review; Green and Blue Infrastructure Assessment; and the final Green and Blue Infrastructure Report. The resulting proposals frame an ambitious vision for the delivery of a new regional South Essex Estuary (SEE) Park – 24,000 hectares of protected and connected landscapes. This unified parkland system will drive effective place-shaping and “leveling up” for the most deprived communities while providing large-scale nature recovery and biodiversity net gain. Comprehensive analysis and policy recommendations ensure best practices will be embedded within planning documents and decisions guiding future development. Furthermore, a Natural Capital Account was undertaken as part of the strategy showing the tremendous economic value of the natural assets. This strategy sets a pioneering precedent that demonstrates how the prioritisation of living infrastructure has the capacity to address climate change and ecological collapse, while also supporting sustainable housing, healthier communities, and resilient infrastructures. It was only achievable through a collaborative and cross-boundary approach to strategic planning and growth, with a shared vision of place, and a strong commitment to delivery. With joined-up thinking and a joined-up region, a more impactful plan for South Essex was developed that will lead to numerous environmental, social, and economic benefits across the region, and enhancing the landscape and natural environs on the periphery of one of the largest cities in the world.

Keywords: climate change, green and blue infrastructure, landscape architecture, master planning, regional planning, social equity

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Authors: Georges F. Hatoum, Thomas H. Temple, Silvio Garcia, Xiaodong Wu

Abstract:

Soft Tissue Sarcomas (STS) represent a diverse group of malignancies with heterogeneous clinical and pathological features. The treatment of extremity STS aims to achieve optimal local tumor control, improved survival, and preservation of limb function. The National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines, based on the cumulated clinical data, recommend radiation therapy (RT) in conjunction with limb-sparing surgery for large, high-grade STS measuring greater than 5 cm in size. Such treatment strategy can offer a cure for patients. However, when recurrence occurs (in nearly half of patients), the prognosis is poor, with a median survival of 12 to 15 months and with only palliative treatment options available. The spatially-fractionated-radiotherapy (SFRT), with a long history of treating bulky tumors as a non-mainstream technique, has gained new attention in recent years due to its unconventional therapeutic effects, such as bystander/abscopal effects. Combining single fraction of GRID, the original form of SFRT, with conventional RT was shown to have marginally increased the rate of pathological necrosis, which has been recognized to have a positive correlation to overall survival. In an effort to consistently increase the pathological necrosis rate over 90%, multiple fractions of Lattice RT (LRT), a newer form of 3D SFRT, interdigitated with the standard RT as neoadjuvant therapy was conducted in a preliminary clinical setting. With favorable results of over 95% of necrosis rate in a small cohort of patients, a Phase I/II clinical study was proposed to exam the safety and feasibility of this new strategy. Herein the design of the clinical study is presented. In this single-arm, two-stage phase I/II clinical trial, the primary objectives are >80% of the patients achieving >90% tumor necrosis and to evaluation the toxicity; the secondary objectives are to evaluate the local control, disease free survival and overall survival (OS), as well as the correlation between clinical response and the relevant biomarkers. The study plans to accrue patients over a span of two years. All patient will be treated with the new neoadjuvant RT regimen, in which one of every five fractions of conventional RT is replaced by a LRT fraction with vertices receiving dose ≥10Gy while keeping the tumor periphery at or close to 2 Gy per fraction. Surgical removal of the tumor is planned to occur 6 to 8 weeks following the completion of radiation therapy. The study will employ a Pocock-style early stopping boundary to ensure patient safety. The patients will be followed and monitored for a period of five years. Despite much effort, the rarity of the disease has resulted in limited novel therapeutic breakthroughs. Although a higher rate of treatment-induced tumor necrosis has been associated with improved OS, with the current techniques, only 20% of patients with large, high-grade tumors achieve a tumor necrosis rate exceeding 50%. If this new neoadjuvant strategy is proven effective, an appreciable improvement in clinical outcome without added toxicity can be anticipated. Due to the rarity of the disease, it is hoped that such study could be orchestrated in a multi-institutional setting.

Keywords: lattice RT, necrosis, SFRT, soft tissue sarcoma

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