Search results for: gender structure

Authors: H. Gokdemir

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All structures are subject to vertical and lateral loads. Under these loads, structures make deformations and deformation values of structural elements mustn't exceed their capacity for structural stability. Especially, lateral loads cause critical deformations because of their random directions and magnitudes. Wind load is one of the lateral loads which can act in any direction and any magnitude. Although wind has nearly no effect on reinforced concrete structures, it must be considered for steel structures, roof systems and slender structures like minarets. Therefore, every structure must be able to resist wind loads acting parallel and perpendicular to any side. One of the effective methods for resisting lateral loads is assembling cross steel elements between columns which are called as wind bracing. These cross elements increases lateral rigidity of a structure and prevent exceeding of deformation capacity of the structural system. So, this means cross elements are also effective in resisting earthquake loads too. In this paper; Effects of wind bracing to earthquake resistance of structures are studied. Structure models (with and without wind bracing) are generated and these models are solved under both earthquake and wind loads with different seismic zone parameters. It is concluded by the calculations that; in low-seismic risk zones, wind bracing can easily resist earthquake loads and no additional reinforcement for earthquake loads is necessary. Similarly; in high-seismic risk zones, earthquake cross elements resist wind loads too.

Keywords: wind bracings, earthquake, steel structures, vertical and lateral loads

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Authors: Eirini Arvanitaki

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Romance has incrementally grown in popularity over the last century. The first Mills & Boon romance novel was published in 1909 and since then romance has not only survived but it has become a long standing genre. There are several reasons behind its durability and success. First, its ability to please and appeal to a mass audience. Romance novels are products of commercial success situated in large scale production, especially if one takes into account the high volume of romance novels published, translated and distributed all around the world every month. Second, what has also contributed to keeping the romance genre alive is the content of the books and their effect on the reader. These are stories of two heterosexual individuals who meet, fall in love, face obstacles and successfully overcome them. Through the love plots, the books address anxieties, concerns and everyday troubles that the average reader can identify with. Additionally, the romance novel is a means of escapism from everyday life and responsibilities as well as a short-lived opportunity to enjoy personal time/space and focus on one’s self. Third, the genre’s ability to adapt to the periods and societies in which it is published has also assisted in prolonging its longevity. This paper discusses the ways in which popular romance authors write and engage with the body. Despite the claim that popular romance narratives adjust their contents in accordance with different time periods and social phenomena, the paper highlights the dissimilarities between writing the female and male body and suggests that women romance writers are yet to break free from phallogocentric law. The examination of the projections of the body and the language used to describe it indicates that these narratives are flexible enough to adjust to twenty-first century but only within the limits of their own conventionality.

Keywords: body, gender, language, literary representations, popular romance narratives, taboo

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Authors: Shatakshi Garg

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As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, India, one of the most populous democratic federal developing nation, continues to report the highest active cases and deaths, as well as struggle to let its health infrastructure not succumb to the exponentially growing requirements of hospital beds, ventilators, oxygen to save thousands of lives daily at risk. In this context, the paper outlines the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic since it first hit India in January 2020 – the policy decisions taken by the Union and the State governments from the larger perspective of its federal structure. The Constitution of India adopted in 1950 enshrined the federal relations between the Union and the State governments by way of the constitutional division of revenue-raising and expenditure responsibilities. By way of the 72nd and 73rd Amendments in the Constitution, powers and functions were devolved further to the third tier, namely the local governments, with the intention of further strengthening the federal structure of the country. However, with time, several constitutional amendments have shifted the scales in favour of the union government. The paper briefly traces some of these major amendments as well as some policy decisions which made the federal relations asymmetrical. As a result, data on key fiscal parameters helps establish how the union government gained upper hand at the expense of weak state governments, reducing the local governments to mere constitutional bodies without adequate funds and fiscal autonomy to carry out the assigned functions. This quasi-federal structure of India with the union government amassing the majority of power in terms of ‘funds, functions and functionaries’ exposed the perils of weakening sub-national governments post COVID-19 pandemic. With a complex quasi-federal structure and a heterogeneous population of over 1.3 billion, the announcement of a sudden nationwide lockdown by the union government was followed by a plight of migrants struggling to reach homes safely in the absence of adequate arrangements for travel and safety-net made by the union government. With limited autonomy enjoyed by the states, they were mostly dictated by the union government on most aspects of handling the pandemic, including protocols for lockdown, re-opening post lockdown, and vaccination drive. The paper suggests that certain policy decisions like demonetization, the introduction of GST, etc., taken by the incumbent government since 2014 when they first came to power, have further weakened the states and local governments, which have amounted to catastrophic losses, both economic and human. The role of the executive, legislature and judiciary are explored to establish how all these three arms of the government have worked simultaneously to further weaken and expose the fault-lines of the federal structure of India, which has lent the nation incapacitated to handle this pandemic. The paper then suggests the urgency of re-looking at the federal structure of the country and undertaking measures that strengthen the sub-national governments and restore the federal spirit as was enshrined in the constitution to avoid mammoth human and economic losses from a pandemic of this sort.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic, India, federal structure, economic losses

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Authors: Munmunlisa Mohanty, K. D. Raju

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Rail industry is one of the model employers in India has separate national legislation (Railways Act 1989) to regulate its vast employment structure, functioning across the country. Indian Railway is not only the premier transport industry of the country; indeed, it is Asia’s most extensive rail network organisation and the world’s second-largest industry functioning under one management. With the growth of globalization of industrial products, the scope of anti-employment discrimination is no more confined to gender aspect only; instead, it extended to the unregularized classification of labour force applicable in the various industrial establishments in India. And the Indian Rail Industry inadvertently enhanced such discriminatory employment trends by engaging contractual labour in an unprecedented manner. The engagement of contractual labour by rail industry vanished the core “Employer-Employee” relationship between rail management and contractual labour who employed through the contractor. This employment trend reduces the cost of production and supervision, discourages the contractual labour from forming unions, and reduces its collective bargaining capacity. So, the primary intention of this paper is to highlight the increasing discriminatory employment scope for contractual labour engaged by Indian Railways. This paper critically analyses the diminishing perspective of anti-employment opportunity practiced by Indian Railways towards contractual labour and demands an urgent outlook on the probable scope of anti-employment discrimination against contractual labour engaged by Indian Railways. The researcher used doctrinal methodology where primary materials (Railways Act, Contract Labour Act and Occupational, health and Safety Code, 2020) and secondary data (CAG Report 2018, Railways Employment Regulation Rules, ILO Report etc.) are used for the paper.

Keywords: anti-employment, CAG Report, contractual labour, discrimination, Indian Railway, principal employer

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Authors: Sunita Kumawat, Sumit Kumar Vishwakarma

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The present study fundamentally focuses on analyzing the limitations and transference of horizontally polarized Shear waves(SH waves) in a four-layered compounded cylinder. The geometrical structure comprises of concentric cylinders of infinite length composed of self-reinforced (SR), fibre-reinforced (FR), piezo-magnetic (PM), and piezo-electric(PE) materials. The entire structure is assumed to be pre stressed along the azimuthal direction. In order to make the structure sensitive to the application pertaining to sensors and actuators, the PM and PE cylinders have been categorically placed in the outer part of the geometry. Whereas in order to provide stiffness and stability to the structure, the inner part consists of self-reinforced and fibre-reinforced media. The common boundary between each of the cylinders has been essentially considered as imperfectly bounded. At the interface of PE and PM media, mechanical, electrical, magnetic, and inter-coupled types of imperfections have been exhibited. The closed-form of dispersion relation has been deduced for two contrast cases i.e. electrically open magnetically short(EOMS) and electrically short and magnetically open ESMO circuit conditions. Dispersion curves have been plotted to illustrate the salient features of parameters like normalized imperfect interface parameters, initial stresses, and radii of the concentric cylinders. The comparative effect of each one of these parameters on the phase velocity of the wave has been enlisted and marked individually. Every graph has been presented with two consecutive modes in succession for a comprehensive understanding. This theoretical study may be implemented to improvise the performance of surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors and actuators consisting of piezo-electric quartz and piezo-composite concentric cylinders.

Keywords: self-reinforced, fibre-reinforced, piezo-electric, piezo-magnetic, interfacial imperfection

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Authors: Ahmadali Tahmasebimoradi, Chetra Mang, Xavier Lorang

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Thanks to the additive manufacturing process, lattice structures are replacing the traditional structures in aeronautical and automobile industries. In order to evaluate the mechanical response of the lattice structures, one has to resort to numerical techniques. Ansys is a globally well-known and trusted commercial software that allows us to model the lattice structures and analyze their mechanical responses using either solid or beam elements. In this software, a script may be used to systematically generate the lattice structures for any size. On the one hand, solid elements allow us to correctly model the contact between the substrates (the supports of the lattice structure) and the lattice structure, the local plasticity, and the junctions of the microbeams. However, their computational cost increases rapidly with the size of the lattice structure. On the other hand, although beam elements reduce the computational cost drastically, it doesn’t correctly model the contact between the lattice structures and the substrates nor the junctions of the microbeams. Also, the notion of local plasticity is not valid anymore. Moreover, the deformed shape of the lattice structure doesn’t correspond to the deformed shape of the lattice structure using 3D solid elements. In this work, motivated by the pros and cons of the 3D and beam models, a numerically hybrid model is presented for the lattice structures to reduce the computational cost of the simulations while avoiding the aforementioned drawbacks of the beam elements. This approach consists of the utilization of solid elements for the junctions and beam elements for the microbeams connecting the corresponding junctions to each other. When the global response of the structure is linear, the results from the hybrid models are in good agreement with the ones from the 3D models for body-centered cubic with z-struts (BCCZ) and body-centered cubic without z-struts (BCC) lattice structures. However, the hybrid models have difficulty to converge when the effect of large deformation and local plasticity are considerable in the BCCZ structures. Furthermore, the effect of the junction’s size of the hybrid models on the results is investigated. For BCCZ lattice structures, the results are not affected by the junction’s size. This is also valid for BCC lattice structures as long as the ratio of the junction’s size to the diameter of the microbeams is greater than 2. The hybrid model can take into account the geometric defects. As a demonstration, the point clouds of two lattice structures are parametrized in a platform called LATANA (LATtice ANAlysis) developed by IRT-SystemX. In this process, for each microbeam of the lattice structures, an ellipse is fitted to capture the effect of shape variation and roughness. Each ellipse is represented by three parameters; semi-major axis, semi-minor axis, and angle of rotation. Having the parameters of the ellipses, the lattice structures are constructed in Spaceclaim (ANSYS) using the geometrical hybrid approach. The results show a negligible discrepancy between the hybrid and 3D models, while the computational cost of the hybrid model is lower than the computational cost of the 3D model.

Keywords: additive manufacturing, Ansys, geometric defects, hybrid finite element model, lattice structure

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Authors: Alemayehu Belay Emagnaw

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This study was conducted to investigate the relationship of mother and father involvement with students’ school performance and the effect of selected family demographic variables (mother and father education, family structure and sex of students) to the involvement of mothers and fathers in their children’s school performance. In addition, this study attempted to differentiate the level of involvement of mothers’ and fathers’ in their children’s school performance. The research was conducted in Bahirdar City, Ethiopia. A total of 175 students (boys were 85 and girls were 90) of grade 7th and 8th private primary schools were selected as respondents using stratified random sampling technique. The data were collected using a questionnaire. Analysis of the data showed that fathers and mothers have significant involvement in their children’s school performance. A significant difference was also found between mothers and fathers involvement in their children’s school performance. Mothers were better involved in their children school performance than fathers. The analysis of inter-correlation between variables showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between mother and father education, mother and father involvement, and school performance whereas, family structure and sex of the child had no significant relationship with school performance.

Keywords: family structure, parental education, parental involvement, school performance

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Authors: E. H. N. Gashti, J. Razzaghi, K. Kujala

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In general, codes and regulations consider seismic loads only for completed structures of the bridges while, evaluation of incomplete structure of bridges, especially those constructed by free cantilever method, under these loads is also of great importance. Hence, this research tried to study the behavior of incomplete structure of common bridge type (box girder bridge), in construction phase under vertical seismic loads. Subsequently, the paper provided suitable guidelines and solutions to withstand this destructive phenomena. Research results proved that use of preventive methods can significantly reduce the stresses resulted from vertical seismic loads in box cross sections to an acceptable range recommended by design codes.

Keywords: box girder bridges, prestress loads, free cantilever method, seismic loads, construction phase

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Authors: Nebbat El Amine

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The void is a dust free region inside the dust cloud in the plasma. It is found that the dust grain charge variation lead to the extension of the void. Moreover, for bigger dust grains, it is seen that the wave-like structure recedes when charge variation is dealt with. Furthermore, as the grain-grain distance is inversely proportional to density, the grain-grain interaction gets more important for a denser dust population and is to be included in momentum equation. For the result indicate above, the plasma is considered non viscous. But in fact, it’s not always true. Some authors measured experimentally the viscosity of this background and found that the viscosity of dusty plasma increase with background gas pressure. In this paper, we tack account the viscosity of the fluid, and we compare the result with that found in the recent work.

Keywords: voids, dusty plasmas, variable charge, viscosity

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Authors: Daniyar Seitenov, Nazim Mir-Nasiri

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Optimization of horizontal axis semi-exposed wind turbine has been performed using a shield protection that automatically protects the generator shaft at extreme wind speeds from over speeding, mechanical damage and continues generating electricity during the high wind speed conditions. A semi-exposed to wind generator has been designed and its structure has been described in this paper. The simplified point-force dynamic load model on the blades has been derived for normal and extreme wind conditions with and without shield involvement. Numerical simulation has been conducted at different values of wind speed to study the efficiency of shield application. The obtained results show that the maximum power generated by the wind turbine with shield does not exceed approximately the rated value of the generator, where shield serves as an automatic break for extreme wind speed values of 15 m/sec and above. Meantime the wind turbine without shield produced a power that is much larger than the rated value. The optimized horizontal axis semi-exposed wind turbine with shield protection is suitable for low and medium power generation when installed on the roofs of high rise buildings for harvesting wind energy. Wind shield works automatically with no power consumption. The structure of the generator with the protection, math simulation of kinematics and dynamics of power generation has been described in details in this paper.

Keywords: renewable energy, wind turbine, wind turbine optimization, high wind speed

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Authors: Shuenn-Yih Chang, Chiu-LI Huang, Ngoc-Cuong Tran

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A new family of structure-dependent integration methods, whose coefficients of the difference equation for displacement increment are functions of the initial structural properties and the step size for time integration, is proposed in this work. This family method can simultaneously integrate the controllable numerical dissipation, explicit formulation and unconditional stability together. In general, its numerical dissipation can be continuously controlled by a parameter and it is possible to achieve zero damping. In addition, it can have high-frequency damping to suppress or even remove the spurious oscillations high frequency modes. Whereas, the low frequency modes can be very accurately integrated due to the almost zero damping for these low frequency modes. It is shown herein that the proposed family method can have exactly the same numerical properties as those of HHT-α method for linear elastic systems. In addition, it still preserves the most important property of a structure-dependent integration method, which is an explicit formulation for each time step. Consequently, it can save a huge computational efforts in solving inertial problems when compared to the HHT-α method. In fact, it is revealed by numerical experiments that the CPU time consumed by the proposed family method is only about 1.6% of that consumed by the HHT-α method for the 125-DOF system while it reduces to be 0.16% for the 1000-DOF system. Apparently, the saving of computational efforts is very significant.

Keywords: structure-dependent integration method, nonlinear dynamic analysis, unconditional stability, numerical dissipation, accuracy

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Authors: Martina Katalin Szabó, István Üveges

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In this paper, the usage of negative emotive words is examined on the basis of a large Hungarian twitter-database via NLP methods. The data is analysed from a gender point of view, as well as changes in language usage over time. The term negative emotive word refers to those words that, on their own, without context, have semantic content that can be associated with negative emotion, but in particular cases, they may function as intensifiers (e.g. rohadt jó ’damn good’) or a sentiment expression with positive polarity despite their negative prior polarity (e.g. brutális, ahogy ez a férfi rajzol ’it’s awesome (lit. brutal) how this guy draws’. Based on the findings of several authors, the same phenomenon can be found in other languages, so it is probably a language-independent feature. For the recent analysis, 67783 tweets were collected: 37818 tweets (19580 tweets written by females and 18238 tweets written by males) in 2016 and 48344 (18379 tweets written by females and 29965 tweets written by males) in 2021. The goal of the research was to make up two datasets comparable from the viewpoint of semantic changes, as well as from gender specificities. An exhaustive lexicon of Hungarian negative emotive intensifiers was also compiled (containing 214 words). After basic preprocessing steps, tweets were processed by ‘magyarlanc’, a toolkit is written in JAVA for the linguistic processing of Hungarian texts. Then, the frequency and collocation features of all these words in our corpus were automatically analyzed (via the analysis of parts-of-speech and sentiment values of the co-occurring words). Finally, the results of all four subcorpora were compared. Here some of the main outcomes of our analyses are provided: There are almost four times fewer cases in the male corpus compared to the female corpus when the negative emotive intensifier modified a negative polarity word in the tweet (e.g., damn bad). At the same time, male authors used these intensifiers more frequently, modifying a positive polarity or a neutral word (e.g., damn good and damn big). Results also pointed out that, in contrast to female authors, male authors used these words much more frequently as a positive polarity word as well (e.g., brutális, ahogy ez a férfi rajzol ’it’s awesome (lit. brutal) how this guy draws’). We also observed that male authors use significantly fewer types of emotive intensifiers than female authors, and the frequency proportion of the words is more balanced in the female corpus. As for changes in language usage over time, some notable differences in the frequency and collocation features of the words examined were identified: some of the words collocate with more positive words in the 2nd subcorpora than in the 1st, which points to the semantic change of these words over time.

Keywords: gender differences, negative emotive words, semantic changes over time, twitter

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Authors: M. Ouassaf, S. Belaid

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A series of quinoline derivatives with antimalarial activity were subjected to two-dimensional quantitative structure-activity relationship (2D-QSAR) studies. Three models were implemented using multiple regression linear MLR, a regression partial least squares (PLS), nonlinear regression (MNLR), to see which descriptors are closely related to the activity biologic. We relied on a principal component analysis (PCA). Based on our results, a comparison of the quality of, MLR, PLS, and MNLR models shows that the MNLR (R = 0.914 and R² = 0.835, RCV= 0.853) models have substantially better predictive capability because the MNLR approach gives better results than MLR (R = 0.835 and R² = 0,752, RCV=0.601)), PLS (R = 0.742 and R² = 0.552, RCV=0.550) The model of MNLR gave statistically significant results and showed good stability to data variation in leave-one-out cross-validation. The obtained results suggested that our proposed model MNLR may be useful to predict the biological activity of derivatives of quinoline.

Keywords: antimalarial, quinoline, QSAR, PCA, MLR , MNLR, MLR

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Authors: Rose C.Anamezie, Mishack T. Gumbo

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Physics learners’ poor retention, which culminates in poor achievement due to teaching approaches that are unrelated to learners’ in non-Western cultures, warranted the study. The tenet of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the ethnoscience-based teaching (EBT) approach on learners’ retention in the Physics concept of Optics in the Awka Education zone of Anambra State- Nigeria. Two research questions and three null hypotheses tested at a 0.05 level of significance guided the study. The design adopted for the study was Quasi-experimental. Specifically, a non-equivalent control group design was adopted. The population for the study was 4,825 SS2 Physics learners in the zone. 160 SS2 learners were sampled using purposive and random sampling. The experimental group was taught rectilinear propagation of light (RPL) using the EBT approach, while the control group was taught the same topic using the lecture method. The instrument for data collection was the 50 Physics Retention Test (PRT) which was validated by three experts and tested for reliability using Kuder-Richardson’s formula-20, which yielded coefficients of 0.81. The data were analysed using mean, standard deviation and analysis of co-variance (p< .05). The results showed higher retention for the use of the EBT approach than the lecture method, while there was no significant gender-based factor in the learners’ retention in Physics. It was recommended that the EBT approach, which bridged the gender gap in Physics retention, be adopted in secondary school teaching and learning since it could transform science teaching, enhance learners’ construction of new science concepts based on their existing knowledge and bridge the gap between Western science and learners’ worldviews.

Keywords: Ethnoscience-based teaching, optics, rectilinear propagation of light, retention

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Authors: Kai Huang, Assamen Ayalew Ejigu, Mu-Jie Lin, Liang-Chiun Chao

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Nickel oxide and copper-nickel oxide thin films have been successfully deposited by reactive ion beam sputter deposition. Experimental results show that nickel oxide deposited at 300°C is single phase NiO while best crystalline quality is achieved with an O_pf of 0.5. XRD analysis of nickel-copper oxide deposited at 300°C shows a Ni2O3 like crystalline structure at low O_pf while changes to NiO like crystalline structure at high O_pf. EDS analysis shows that nickel-copper oxide deposited at low O_pf is CuxNi2-xO3 with x = 1, while nickel-copper oxide deposited at high O_pf is CuxNi1-xO with x = 0.5, which is supported by Raman analysis. The bandgap of NiO is ~ 3.5 eV regardless of O_pf while the band gap of nickel-copper oxide decreases from 3.2 to 2.3 eV as Opf reaches 1.0.

Keywords: copper, ion beam, NiO, oxide, resistivity, transparent

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Authors: Basem A. El Werfallia, Osama R. Shaltamiab, Ragab M. Al Alwanyc

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The present work aims to characterize the geochemistry of the beach sands along the Mediterranean Coast from Al Kuwifia to Tolmeita, NE Libya. The major oxides CaO and MgO are the main constituents of the carbonate minerals; calcite and aragonite. SiO2 is mainly in the form of quartz. Sometimes a high quotient of SiO2 together with the oxides; Al2O3, K2O and partly of Na2O, TiO2 and Fe2O3 are essentially allocated within the structure of the feldspars. Part of Na2O and the content of Cl belong mainly to halite. Part of Fe2O3 and TiO2 may be accommodated as iron oxyhydroxides. Part of CaO and the content of SO3 are allotted within the gypsum structure. Ba, Sr, Th, U and REE are basicallycontrolled by the carbonate fraction, while Cu, Zn, V and Cr are strongly correlated with Al2O3.

Keywords: geochemistry, major oxides, Al Kuwifia, Tolmeita

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Authors: Y. A. R. Oliveira, M. A. Couto dos Santos, N. B. C. Júnior, S. J. L. Ribeiro, L. D. Carlos

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The Eu(TTA)3(H2O)2 complex (TTA = thenoyltrifluoroacetone) pure (EuTTA) and incorporated in an organicinorganic hybrid material (EuTTA-hyb) are revisited, this time from the crystal field parameters (CFP) and Judd-Ofelt intensity parameters (Ωλ) point of view. A detailed analysis of the emission spectra revealed that the EuTTA phase still remains in the hybrid phase. Sparkle Model calculations of the EuTTA ground state geometry have been performed and satisfactorily compared to the X-ray structure. The observed weaker crystal field strength of the phase generated by the incorporation is promptly interpreted through the existing EXAFS results of the EuTTA-hyb structure. Satisfactory predictions of the CFP, of the 7F1 level splitting and of the Ωλ in all cases were obtained by using the charge factors and polarizabilities as degrees of freedom of non-parametric models.

Keywords: crystal field parameters, europium complexes, Judd-Ofelt intensity parameters

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Authors: Rishi Kanth Saripalle

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Medical experts highly recommend to include physical activity in everyone’s daily routine irrespective of gender or age as it helps to improve various medical issues or curb potential issues. Simultaneously, experts are also diligently trying to provide various healthcare services (interventions, plans, exercise routines, etc.) for promoting healthy living and increasing physical activity in one’s ever increasing hectic schedules. With the introduction of wearables, individuals are able to keep track, analyze, and visualize their daily physical activities. However, there seems to be no common agreed standard for representing, gathering, aggregating and analyzing an individual’s physical activity data from disparate multiple sources (exercise pans, multiple wearables, etc.). This issue makes it highly impractical to develop any data-driven physical activity applications and healthcare programs. Further, the inability to integrate the physical activity data into an individual’s Electronic Health Record to provide a wholistic image of that individual’s health is still eluding the experts. This article has identified three primary reasons for this potential issue. First, there is no agreed standard, both structure and semantic, for representing and sharing physical activity data across disparate systems. Second, various organizations (e.g., LA fitness, Gold’s Gym, etc.) and research backed interventions and programs still primarily rely on paper or unstructured format (such as text or notes) to keep track of the data generated from physical activities. Finally, most of the wearable devices operate in silos. This article identifies the underlying problem, explores the idea of reusing existing standards, and identifies the essential modules required to move forward.

Keywords: electronic physical activity record, physical activity in EHR EIM, tracking physical activity data, physical activity data standards

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Authors: Sujit Kumar Sinha, R. Chattopadhyay

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In the course of processing phases and use, fibres, yarns, or fabrics are subjected to a variety of stresses and strains, which cause the development of internal stresses. Given an opportunity, these inherent stresses try to bring back the structure to the original state. As an example, a twisted yarn always shows a tendency to untwist whenever its one end is made free. If the yarn is not held under tension, it may form snarls due to the presence of excessive torque. The running performance of such yarn or thread may, therefore, get negatively affected by it, as a snarl may not pass through the knitting or sewing needle smoothly, leading to an end break. A fabric shows a tendency to form wrinkles whenever squeezed. It may also shrink when brought to a relaxed state. In order to improve performance (i.e., dimensional stability or appearance), stabilization of the structure is needed. The stabilization can be attained through the release of internal stresses, which can be brought about by the process of annealing and/or other finishing treatments. When a fabric is subjected to heat, a change in the properties of the fibers, yarns, and fabric is expected. The degree to which the properties are affected would depend upon the condition of heat treatment and on the properties & structure of fibres, yarns, and fabric. In the present study, an attempt has been made to investigate the effect of annealing treatment on the properties of polyester cotton yarns with varying sheath structures.

Keywords: friction spun yarn, annealing, tenacity, structural integrity, decay

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Authors: Adriano Trono, Federico Pinto, Diego Turello, Marcelo A. Ceballos

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Numerical modeling of dynamic soil-structure interaction problems requires an adequate representation of the unbounded characteristics of the ground, material non-linearity of soils, and geometrical non-linearities such as large displacements due to rocking of the structure. In order to account for these effects simultaneously, it is often required that the equations of motion are solved in the time domain. However, boundary conditions in conventional finite element codes generally present shortcomings in fully absorbing the energy of outgoing waves. In this sense, the Perfectly Matched Layers (PML) technique allows a satisfactory absorption of inclined body waves, as well as surface waves. However, the PML domain is inherently unstable, meaning that it its instability does not depend upon the discretization considered. One way to stabilize the PML domain is to use multiaxial stretching functions. This development is questionable because some Jacobian terms of the coordinate transformation are not accounted for. For this reason, the resulting absorbing layer element is often referred to as "uncorrected M-PML” in the literature. In this work, the strong formulation of the "corrected M-PML” absorbing layer is proposed using multiaxial stretching functions that incorporate all terms of the coordinate transformation. The results of the stable model are compared with reference solutions obtained from extended domain models.

Keywords: mixed finite elements, multiaxial stretching functions, perfectly matched layer, soil-structure interaction

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Authors: Eliane Abdo, Olivier Colot

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SMEs are always considered as a national priority due to their contribution to job creation, innovation and growth. Once the start-up phase is crossed with encouraging results, the company enters the phase of growth. In order to improve its competitiveness, maintain and increase its market share, the company is in the necessity even the obligation to develop its tangible and intangible investments. SMEs are generally closed companies with special and critical financial situation, limited resources and difficulty to access the capital markets; their shareholders are always living in a conflict between their independence and their need to increase capital that leads to the entry of new shareholder. The capital structure was always considered the core of research in corporate finance; moreover, the financial crisis and its repercussions on the credit’s availability, especially for SMEs make SME financing a hot topic. On the other hand, financial theories do not provide answers to capital structure’s questions; they offer tools and mode of financing that are more accessible to larger companies. Yet, SME’s capital structure can’t be independent of their governance structure. The classic financial theory supposes independence between the investment decision and the financing decision. Thus, investment determines the volume of funding, but not the split between internal or external funds. In this context, we find interesting to study the hypothesis that SMEs respond positively to the financial theories applied to large firms and to check if they are constrained by conventional solutions used by large companies. In this context, this research focuses on the analysis of the resource’s structure of SME in parallel with their investments’ structure, in order to highlight a link between their assets and liabilities structure. We founded our conceptual model based on two main theoretical frameworks: the Pecking order theory, and the Trade Off theory taking into consideration the SME’s characteristics. Our data were generated from DIANE database. Five hypotheses were tested via a panel regression to understand the type of dependence between the financing methods of 3,244 French SMEs and the development of their investment over a period of 10 years (2007-2016). The results show dependence between equity and internal financing in case of intangible investments development. Moreover, this type of business is constraint to financial debts since the guarantees provided are not sufficient to meet the banks' requirements. However, for tangible investments development, SMEs count sequentially on internal financing, bank borrowing, and new shares issuance or hybrid financing. This is compliant to the Pecking Order Theory. We, therefore, conclude that unlisted SMEs incur more financial debts to finance their tangible investments more than their intangible. However, they always prefer internal financing as a first choice. This seems to be confirmed by the assumption that the profitability of the company is negatively related to the increase of the financial debt. Thus, the Pecking Order Theory predictions seem to be the most plausible. Consequently, SMEs primarily rely on self-financing and then go, into debt as a priority to finance their financial deficit.

Keywords: capital structure, investments, life cycle, pecking order theory, trade off theory

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Authors: Michał Rogala, Jakub Gajewski

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As the automotive industry develops, passive safety is becoming an increasingly important aspect when designing motor vehicles. A commonly used solution is energy absorption by thin-walled construction. One such structure is a closed thin-walled profile fixed to the vehicle stringers. The article presents numerical tests of conical thin-walled profiles filled with aluminum foam. The columns were loaded axially with constant energy. On the basis of the results obtained, efficiency indicators were calculated. The efficiency of the foam filling was evaluated. Artificial neural networks were used for data analysis. The application of regression analysis was used as a tool to study the relationship between the quantities characteristic of the dynamic crush.

Keywords: aluminium foam, crashworthiness, neural networks, thin-walled structure

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Authors: Pearl K. Atuhaire, Sylvia Kaye

Abstract:

While the need for equal access to civil, political as well as economic, social and cultural rights is clear under the international law, the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against women in 1979 made this even clearer. Despite this positive progress, the abuse of refugee women's rights is one of the basic underlying root causes of their marginalisation and violence in their countries of asylum. This paper presents a critical review on the development of refugee women's rights at the international levels and national levels. It provides an array of scholarly literature on this issue and examines the measures taken by the international community to curb the problem of violence against women in their various provisions through the instruments set. It is cognizant of the fact that even if conflict affects both refugee women and men, the effects on women refugees are deep-reaching, due to the cultural strongholds they face. An important aspect of this paper is that it is conceptualised against the fact that refugee women face the problem of sexual and gender based first as refugees and second as women, yet, their rights are stumbled upon. Often times they have been rendered "worthless victims" who are only in need of humanitarian assistance than active participants committed to change their plight through their participation in political, economic and social participation in their societies. Scholars have taken notice of the fact that women's rights in refugee settings have been marginalized and call for a need to incorporate their perspectives in the planning and management of refugee settings in which they live. Underpinning this discussion is feminism theory which gives a clear understanding of the root cause of refugee women's problems. Finally, this paper suggests that these policies should be translated into action at local, national international and regional levels to ensure sustainable peace.

Keywords: feminism theory, human rights, refugee women, sexual and gender based violence

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Authors: Olga Santesteban, Glorisa Canino, Hector R. Bird, Cristiane S. Duarte

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Objective: To address whether harsh discipline is associated with disruptive behavior disorders (DBD) in Puerto Rican children over time. Background: Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies report that rates of DBD vary by gender, age and other demographics, being more frequent among boys, later in life and among those who live in urban areas. Also, the literature supports the direct, positive association between harsh discipline and externalizing behaviors. Nevertheless, scholars have underscored the important role of race and ethnicity in understanding discipline effects on children. The impact of harsh discipline in a Puerto Rican population remains to be studied. Methods: Sample: This is a secondary analysis of the Boricua Youth Study which assessed yearly (3 times) Puerto Rican children aged 5-15 in two different sites: San Juan (Puerto Rico) and the South Bronx (NY), N=2951. Participants that did not have scores of harsh discipline in the 3 waves were excluded for this analysis (N=2091). Main Measures: a) Harsh Discipline (Parent report) was measured using 6 items from the “Parental Discipline Scale” that measures various forms of punishment, including physical and verbal abuse, and withholding affection; b) Disruptive Behavior Disorder (Parent report): Parent version of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children-IV (DISC-IV) was used to asses children’s conduct disorders; c) Demographic factors: Child gender, child age, family income, marital status; d) Parental factors: parental psychopathology, parental monitoring, familism, parent support; e) Children characteristics: Controlling for any diagnostic at wave 1 (internalizing or externalizing). Data Analysis: Logistic regression was carried out relating the likelihood of DBD to harsh discipline along waves controlling for potential confounders as demographics, child and parent characteristics. Results: There were no significant differences in harsh discipline by site in wave 1 and wave 2 but there was a significant difference in wave 3. Also, there were no significant differences in DBD by site in wave 1 and wave 2 but there was a significant difference in wave 3. There was a significant difference of discipline by gender and age in all the waves. We calculated unadjusted (OR) and adjusted (AOD) and 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) showing the relation between harsh discipline at wave 1 and the presence of child disruptive behavior disorder at wave 3 for both South Bronx and Puerto Rico. There was an association between harsh discipline and the likelihood of having DBD in The Bronx (AOR=1.76; 95%CI=1.13-2.74, p.013) and in Puerto Rico (AOR=2.17; 95%CI=1.28-3.67, p.004) having controlled for demographic, parental and individual factors. Conclusions: Context may be an important differential factor shaping the potential risk of harsh discipline toward DBD for Puerto Rican children.

Keywords: disruptive behavior disorders, harsh discipline, puerto rican, psychological education

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Authors: Shiv Jyoti Pandey, Shveta Puri, G. M. Bhat, Neha Raina

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The Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) region of Northwest Himalaya has a long history of earthquake activity which falls within Seismic Zones IV and V. To know the crustal structure beneath this region, we utilized teleseismic receiver function method. This paper presents the results of the analyses of the teleseismic earthquake waves recorded by 10 seismic observatories installed in the vicinity of major thrusts and faults. The teleseismic waves at epicentral distance between 30o and 90o with moment magnitudes greater than or equal to 5.5 that contains large amount of information about the crust and upper mantle structure directly beneath a receiver has been used. The receiver function (RF) technique has been widely applied to investigate crustal structures using P-to-S converted (Ps) phases from velocity discontinuities. The arrival time of the Ps, PpPs and PpSs+ PsPs converted and reverberated phases from the Moho can be combined to constrain the mean crustal thickness and Vp/Vs ratio. Over 500 receiver functions from 10 broadband stations located in the Jammu & Kashmir region of Northwest Himalaya were analyzed. With the help of H-K stacking method, we determined the crustal thickness (H) and average crustal Vp/Vs ratio (K) in this region. We also used Neighbourhood algorithm technique to verify our results. The receiver function results for these stations show that the crustal thickness under Jammu & Kashmir ranges from 45.0 to 53.6 km with an average value of 50.01 km. The Vp/Vs ratio varies from 1.63 to 1.99 with an average value of 1.784 which corresponds to an average Poisson’s ratio of 0.266 with a range from 0.198 to 0.331. High Poisson’s ratios under some stations may be related to partial melting in the crust near the uppermost mantle. The crustal structure model developed from this study can be used to refine the velocity model used in the precise epicenter location in the region, thereby increasing the knowledge to understand current seismicity in the region.

Keywords: H-K stacking, Poisson’s ratios, receiver function, teleseismic

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Authors: Majid Samiee Zonoozian

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For such important constructions as jacket type platforms, scrupulous attention in analysis, design and calculation processes is needed. The reliability assessment method has been established into an extensively used method to behavior safety calculation of jacket platforms. In the present study, a methodology for the reliability calculation of an offshore jacket platform in contradiction of the extreme wave loading state is available. Therefore, sensitivity analyses are applied to acquire the nonlinear response of jacket-type platforms against extreme waves. The jacket structure is modeled by applying a nonlinear finite-element model with regards to the tubular members' behave. The probability of a member’s failure under extreme wave loading is figured by a finite-element reliability code. The FORM and SORM approaches are applied for the calculation of safety directories and reliability indexes have been detected. A case study for a fixed jacket-type structure positioned in the Persian Gulf is studied by means of the planned method. Furthermore, to define the failure standards, equations suggested by the 21st version of the API RP 2A-WSD for The jacket-type structures’ tubular members designing by applying the mixed axial bending and axial pressure. Consequently, the effect of wave Loades in the reliability index was considered.

Keywords: Jacket-Type structure, reliability, failure probability, tubular members

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Authors: Alok Kumar Kamal, Vinod Kumar

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The trench gate MOSFET has shown itself as the most appropriate power device for low to medium voltage power applications due to its lowest possible ON resistance among all power semiconductor devices. In this research work a double-epilayer PSGT structure using a thin layer of N+ polysilicon as gate material. The total ON-state resistance (RON) of UMOSFET can be reduced by optimizing the epilayer thickness. The optimized structure of Double-Epilayer exhibits a 25.8% reduction in the ON-state resistance at Vgs=5V and improving the switching characteristics by reducing the Reverse transfer capacitance (Cgd) by 7.4%.

Keywords: Miller-capacitance, double-Epilayer;switching characteristics, power trench MOSFET (U-MOSFET), on-state resistance, blocking voltage

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Authors: Jaechoul Shin, Juhwan Hwang

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In case of applying the BIM method to the civil engineering in the area of free formed structure, we can expect comparatively high rate of construction productivity as it is in the building engineering area. In this research, we developed quantity calculation error applying it to earthwork and bridge construction (e.g. PSC-I type segmental girder bridge amd integrated bridge of steel I-girders and inverted-Tee bent cap), NATM (New Austrian Tunneling Method) tunnel construction, retaining wall construction, culvert construction and implemented BIM based 3D modeling quantity survey. we confirmed high reliability of the BIM-based method in structure work in which errors occurred in range between -6% ~ +5%. Especially, understanding of the problem and improvement of the existing 2D-CAD based of quantity calculation through rock type quantity calculation error in range of -14% ~ +13% of earthwork quantity calculation. It is benefit and applicability of BIM method in civil engineering. In addition, routine method for quantity of earthwork has the same error tolerance negligible for that of structure work. But, rock type's quantity calculated as the error appears significantly to the reliability of 2D-based volume calculation shows that the problem could be. Through the estimating quantity of earthwork based 3D-BIM, proposed method has better reliability than routine method. BIM, as well as the design, construction, maintenance levels of information when you consider the benefits of integration, the introduction of BIM design in civil engineering and the possibility of applying for the effectiveness was confirmed.

Keywords: BIM, 3D modeling, 3D-BIM, quantity of earthwork

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Authors: Shiming Li, Qingwang Liu, Honggan Wu, Jianbing Zhang

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Plantation forests are useful for timber production, recreation, environmental protection and social development. Stands height is an important parameter for the estimation of forest volume and carbon stocks. Although lidar is suitable technology for the vertical parameters extraction of forests, but high costs make it not suitable for operational inventory. With the development of computer vision and photogrammetry, aerial photos from unmanned aerial system can be used as an alternative solution for height mapping. Structure-from-motion (SfM) photogrammetry technique can be used to extract DSM and DEM information. Canopy height model (CHM) can be achieved by subtraction DEM from DSM. Our result shows that overlapping aerial photos is a potential solution for plantation forests height mapping.

Keywords: forest height mapping, plantation forests, structure-from-motion photogrammetry, UAS

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Authors: Maryam Kamali Nezhad

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As part of the project to rehabilitate the main spillway ("main") of the Rapides-des-Îles development in 2019, it was noted that there is a difference between the water level of the intake gauge and the level measured at the main spillway. The Rapides-des-Îles Generating Station is a Hydro-Québec hydroelectric generating station and dam located on the Ottawa River in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue administrative region of Québec. This plant, with an installed capacity of 176 MW, was commissioned in 1966. During the start-up meeting held at the site in May 2019, it was noticed that the water level upstream of the main spillway was considerably higher than the water level at the powerhouse intake. Measurements showed that the level was 229.46 m, whereas the normal operating level (NOL) and the critical maximum level (CML) used in the design were 228.60 m and 229.51 m, respectively. Considering that the water level had almost reached the maximum critical level of the structure despite a flood with a recurrence period of about 100 years, the work was suspended while the project was being decided. This is the first time since the Rapides des îles project was commissioned that a significant difference in elevation between the water level at the powerhouse (intake) and the main spillway has been observed. Following this observation, the contractor's work was suspended. The objective of this study is to identify the reason(s) for this problem and find solutions. Then determine the new upstream levels at the main spillway at which the safety of the structure is ensured and then adjust the engineering of the main spillway in the rehabilitation project accordingly.

Keywords: spillway, rehabilitation, water level, powerhouse, normal operating level, critical maximum level, safety of the structure

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