Search results for: drone package delivery

Authors: Byoungjoon Yu, Jihwan Park, Sujung Sin, Junghyun Im, Minsoo Park, Sehwan Park, Seunghee Park

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In this paper, we propose a technology to monitor the soundness of an Internet-based bridge using a non-conductive inspection function. There has been a collapse accident due to the aging of the bridge structure, and it is necessary to prepare for the deterioration of the bridge. The NDT/SHM system for maintenance of existing bridge structures requires a large number of inspection personnel and expensive inspection costs, and access of expensive and large equipment to measurement points is required. Because current drone inspection equipment can only be inspected through camera, it is difficult to inspect inside damage accurately, and the results of an internal damage evaluation are subjective, and it is difficult for non-specialists to recognize the evaluation results. Therefore, it is necessary to develop NDT/SHM techniques for maintenance of new-concept bridge structures that allow for free movement and real-time evaluation of measurement results. This work is financially supported by Korea Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (MOLIT) as 'Smart City Master and Doctor Course Grant Program' and a grant (14SCIP-B088624-01) from Construction Technology Research Program funded by Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport of Korean government.

Keywords: Structural Health Monitoring, SHM, non-contact sensing, nondestructive testing, NDT, Internet of Things, autonomous self-driving drone

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Authors: Matthew O. Ikuabe, Ayodeji E. Oke, Clinton O. Aigbavboa, Douglas O. Aghimien

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The use of technological innovations have been touted to be beneficial in the delivery of construction projects. Particularly, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is widely regarded to be of immense advantage for the management of construction projects. This study focused on evaluating the barriers to the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology for the delivery of construction projects. Using Gauteng Provincein South Africa as the study area, questionnaire was used in eliciting responses from construction professionals, which made up the population of the study. Retrieved data was analysed using Mean Item Score and One-Sample t-test. Findings from the study showed that the most significant barriers to the deployment of RFID for construction project delivery are high cost and lack of awareness. Conclusively, the study made recommendations that would aid in the abatement of the barriers to the use of RFID technology for construction project delivery.

Keywords: barriers, construction, project delivery, RFID

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Authors: Ahmed El Naggar, Homyan Saleh

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Dams are crucial for flood control, water supply, and the creation of hydroelectric power. Every dam has a water conveyance system, such as a spillway, providing the safe discharge of catastrophic floods when necessary. Spillway design has historically been investigated in laboratory research owing to the absence of suitable full-scale flow monitoring equipment and safety problems. Prototype measurements of aerated flows are urgently needed to quantify projected scale effects and provide missing validation data for design guidelines and numerical simulations. In this work, an image-based investigation of free-surface flows on a tiered spillway was undertaken at the laboratory (fixed camera installation) and prototype size (drone video) (drone footage) (drone footage). The drone videos were generated using data from citizen science. Analyses permitted the measurement of the free-surface aeration inception point, air-water surface velocities, fluctuations, and residual energy at the chute's downstream end from a remote site. The prototype observations offered full-scale proof of concept, while laboratory results were efficiently confirmed against invasive phase-detection probe data. This paper stresses the efficacy of image-based analyses at prototype spillways. It highlights how citizen science data may enable academics better understand real-world air-water flow dynamics and offers a framework for a small collection of long-missing prototype data.

Keywords: remote sensing, aerated flows, large dams, proof of concept, dam spillways, air-water flows, prototype operation, remote sensing, inception point, optical flow, turbulence, residual energy

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Authors: Ria Ghosh, Soumendra Singh, Dipanjan Mukherjee, Susmita Mondal, Monojit Das, Uttam Pal, Aniruddha Adhikari, Aman Bhushan, Surajit Bose, Siddharth Sankar Bhattacharyya, Debasish Pal, Tanusri Saha-Dasgupta, Maitree Bhattacharyya, Debasis Bhattacharyya, Asim Kumar Mallick, Ranjan Das, Samir Kumar Pal

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Drug delivery to a target without adverse effects is one of the major criteria for clinical use. Herein, we have made an attempt to explore the delivery efficacy of SDS surfactant in a monomer and micellar stage during the delivery of the model drug, Toluidine Blue (TB) from the micellar cavity to DNA. Molecular recognition of pre-micellar SDS encapsulated TB with DNA occurs at a rate constant of k1 ~652 s 1. However, no significant release of encapsulated TB at micellar concentration was observed within the experimental time frame. This originated from the higher binding affinity of TB towards the nano-cavity of SDS at micellar concentration which does not allow the delivery of TB from the nano-cavity of SDS micelles to DNA. Thus, molecular recognition controls the extent of DNA recognition by TB which in turn modulates the rate of delivery of TB from SDS in a concentration-dependent manner.

Keywords: DNA, drug delivery, micelle, pre-micelle, SDS, toluidine blue

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Authors: Yildiray Korkmaz, Mehmet Aksoy

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In today's operations, countries want to reach their aims in the shortest way due to economical, political and humanitarian aspects. The most effective way of achieving this goal is to be able to penetrate strategic targets. Strategic targets are generally located deep inside of the countries and are defended by modern and efficient surface to air missiles (SAM) platforms which are operated as integrated with Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems. On the other hand, these high valued targets are buried deep underground and hardened with strong materials against attacks. Therefore, to penetrate these targets requires very detailed intelligence. This intelligence process should include a wide range that is from weaponry to threat assessment. Accordingly, the framework of the attack package will be determined. This mission package has to execute missions in a high threat environment. The way to minimize the risk which depends on loss of life is to use packages which are formed by UAVs. However, some limitations arising from the characteristics of UAVs restricts the performance of the mission package consisted of UAVs. So, the mission package should be formed with UAVs under the leadership of a fifth generation manned aircraft. Thus, we can minimize the limitations, easily penetrate in the deep inside of the enemy territory with minimum risk, make a decision according to ever-changing conditions and finally destroy the strategic targets. In this article, the strengthens and weakness aspects of UAVs are examined by SWOT analysis. And also, it revealed features of a mission package and presented as an example what kind of a mission package we should form in order to get marginal benefit and penetrate into strategic targets with the development of autonomous mission execution capability in the near future.

Keywords: UAV, autonomy, mission package, strategic attack, mission planning

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Authors: Onyeka Nkwonta, Theo Haupt, Karana Padayachee

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This study aims primarily to identify potential causes of the bottlenecks in the public sector that affect delivery and formulate evidence-based interventions to improve delivery and management of infrastructure projects. An initial literature review was carried out on infrastructural development and delivery in South Africa, with the aim to formulate evidence-based interventions to improve delivery within the sector. The infrastructure delivery management model was developed to map out best practice delivery processes. These will become the backbone on which improvement initiatives that will be developed within participating stakeholders. The model will, in turn, support a range of methodologies, including the risk system and a knowledge management framework. It will also look at key challenges facing departments with the ability to ensure knowledge and skills transfer at various sectors. The research is limited because the findings were based on existing literature. This study adopted an indirect approach for infrastructure management by focussing on the challenges faced and approaches adopted to overcome these challenges. This may narrow the consideration of some of the viewpoints, thereby limiting the richness of experience available to this research.

Keywords: infrastructure, management, challenges, South Africa

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Authors: Kaarunya Sampathkumar, Say Chye Joachim Loo

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Oral delivery is regarded as the facile method for the administration of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and drug carriers. In an initiative towards sustainable nanotechnology, an oral nano-delivery system has been developed that is made entirely of food-based materials and can also act as a site-specific delivery device depending on the stimulus encountered in different parts of the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). The delivery system has been fabricated from food grade polysaccharide materials like chitosan and starch through electrospraying technique without the use of any organic solvents. A nutraceutical extracted from an Indian medicinal plant, has been loaded into the nano carrier to test its efficacy in encapsulation and stimuli based release of the active ingredient. The release kinetics of the nutraceutical from the carrier was evaluated in simulated gastric, intestinal and colonic fluid and was found to be triggered both by the enzymes and the pH in each part of the intestinal tract depending on the polysaccharide being used. The toxicity of the nanoparticles on the intestinal epithelial cells was tested and found to be relatively safe for up to 24 hours at a concentration of 0.2 mg/mL with cellular uptake also being observed. The developed nano carrier thus serves as a promising delivery vehicle for targeted delivery to different parts of the GIT with the inherent conditions of the GIT itself acting as the stimulus. In addition, being fabricated from food grade materials, the carrier could be potentially used for the targeted delivery of nutrients through functional foods.

Keywords: bioavailability, chitosan, delivery systems, encapsulation

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Authors: Nader A. Al Theeb, Zaid Abu Manneh, Ibrahim Al-Qadi

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Traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a combinatorial integer optimization problem that asks "What is the optimal route for a vehicle to traverse in order to deliver requests to a given set of customers?”. It is widely used by the package carrier companies’ distribution centers. The main goal of applying the TSP in courier organizations is to minimize the time that it takes for the courier in each trip to deliver or pick up the shipments during a day. In this article, an optimization model is constructed to create a new TSP variant to optimize the routing in a courier organization with a consideration of congestion in Amman, the capital of Jordan. Real data were collected by different methods and analyzed. Then, concert technology - CPLEX was used to solve the proposed model for some random generated data instances and for the real collected data. At the end, results have shown a great improvement in time compared with the current trip times, and an economic study was conducted afterwards to figure out the impact of using such models.

Keywords: travel salesman problem, congestions, pick-up, integer programming, package carriers, service engineering

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Authors: Ada Garus

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This paper presents the outcomes of the sustainability assessment of food delivery with a last-mile delivery service introduced in a real-world case study. The methodology used in the sustainability assessment integrates multi-criteria decision-making analysis, sustainability pillars, and scenario analysis to best reflect the conflicting needs of stakeholders involved in the last mile delivery system. The case study provides an application of the framework to the food delivery system of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission where three alternative solutions were analyzed I) the existent state in which individuals frequent the local cantine or pick up their food, using their preferred mode of transport II) the hypothetical scenario in which individuals can only order their food using the delivery droid system III) a scenario in which the food delivery droid based system is introduced as a supplement to the current system. The environmental indices are calculated using a simulation study in which decision regarding the food delivery is predicted using a multinomial logit model. The vehicle dynamics model is used to predict the fuel consumption of the regular combustion engines vehicles used by the cantine goers and the electricity consumption of the droid. The sustainability assessment allows for the evaluation of the economic, environmental, and social aspects of food delivery, making it an apt input for policymakers. Moreover, the assessment is one of the first studies to investigate automated delivery droids, which could become a frequent addition to the urban landscape in the near future.

Keywords: innovations in transportation technologies, behavioural change and mobility, urban freight logistics, innovative transportation systems

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Authors: M. Duran Toksari, Berrin Ucarkus

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In this paper, we propose two algorithms to optimally solve makespan and total completion time scheduling problems with learning effect and job dependent delivery times in a single machine environment. The delivery time is the extra time to eliminate adverse effect between the main processing and delivery to the customer. In this paper, we introduce the job dependent delivery times for some single machine scheduling problems with position dependent learning effect, which are makespan are total completion. The results with respect to two algorithms proposed for solving of the each problem are compared with LINGO solutions for 50-jobs, 100-jobs and 150-jobs problems. The proposed algorithms can find the same results in shorter time.

Keywords: delivery Times, learning effect, makespan, scheduling, total completion time

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Authors: Alejandra Yanez, Teresa Benavides, Zita Lopez

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Even before COVID-19, one of the most important challenges that Higher Education faces today is the need for innovative educational methodologies and flexibility. We could all agree that one of the objectives of Higher Education is to provide students with a variety of intellectual and practical skills that, at the same time, will help them develop competitive advantages such as adaptation and critical thinking. Among the strategic objectives of Universidad de Monterrey (UDEM) has been to provide flexibility and satisfaction to students in the delivery modes of the academic offer. UDEM implemented a methodology that combines face to face with synchronous and asynchronous as delivery modes. UDEM goal, in this case, was to implement new technologies and different teaching methodologies that will improve the students learning experience. In this study, the experience of students during courses implemented in new delivery mode was compared with students in courses with traditional delivery modes. Students chose openly either way freely. After everything students around the world lived in 2020 and 2021, one can think that the face to face (traditional) delivery mode would be the one chosen by students. The results obtained in this study reveal that both delivery modes satisfy students and favor their learning process. We will show how the combination of delivery modes provides flexibility, so the proposal is that universities can include them in their academic offer as a response to the current student's learning interests and needs.

Keywords: flexibility, new delivery modes, student satisfaction, academic offer

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Authors: Shael Brown, Reza Farivar

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Persistence diagrams capture valuable topological features of datasets that other methods cannot uncover. Still, their adoption in data pipelines has been limited due to the lack of publicly available tools in R (and python) for analyzing groups of them with machine learning and statistical inference. In an easy-to-use and scalable R package called TDApplied, we implement several applied analysis methods tailored to groups of persistence diagrams. The two main contributions of our package are comprehensiveness (most functions do not have implementations elsewhere) and speed (shown through benchmarking against other R packages). We demonstrate applications of the tools on simulated data to illustrate how easily practical analyses of any dataset can be enhanced with topological information.

Keywords: machine learning, persistence diagrams, R, statistical inference

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Authors: Sung-Hyeon Park, Jin-Wook Jang, Hak-Sung Kim

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In recent years, Terahertz (THz) time-domain spectroscopy (TDS) imaging method has been received considerable interest as a promising non-destructive technique for detection of internal defects. In comparison to other non-destructive techniques such as x-ray inspection method, scanning acoustic tomograph (SAT) and microwave inspection method, THz-TDS imaging method has many advantages: First, it can measure the exact thickness and location of defects. Second, it doesn’t require the liquid couplant while it is very crucial to deliver that power of ultrasonic wave in SAT method. Third, it didn’t damage to materials and be harmful to human bodies while x-ray inspection method does. Finally, it exhibits better spatial resolution than microwave inspection method. However, this technology couldn’t be applied to IC package because THz radiation can penetrate through a wide variety of materials including polymers and ceramics except of metals. Therefore, it is difficult to detect the defects in IC package which are composed of not only epoxy and semiconductor materials but also various metals such as copper, aluminum and gold. In this work, we proposed a special method for detecting the void in the IC package using THz-TDS imaging system. The IC package specimens for this study are prepared by Packaging Engineering Team in Samsung Electronics. Our THz-TDS imaging system has a special reflection mode called pitch-catch mode which can change the incidence angle in the reflection mode from 10 o to 70 o while the others have transmission and the normal reflection mode or the reflection mode fixed at certain angle. Therefore, to find the voids in the IC package, we investigated the appropriate angle as changing the incidence angle of THz wave emitter and detector. As the results, the voids in the IC packages were successfully detected using our THz-TDS imaging system.

Keywords: terahertz, non-destructive technique, void, IC package

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Authors: Vivian Wu

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During the mating season, honeybee drones make mating fights to congregation areas where they face fierce competition to mate with a queen. Drones have developed distinct anatomical and functional features in order to optimize their chances of success. Flight activities of western honeybee (Apis mellifera) drones and foragers were monitored using radio frequency identification (RFID) to test if drones have also developed distinct flight behaviors. Drone flight durations showed a bimodal distribution dividing the flights into short flights and long flights while forager flight durations showed a left-skewed unimodal distribution. Interestingly, the short trips occurred prior to the long trips on a daily basis. The first trips of the day the drones made were primarily short trips, and the distribution significantly shifted to long trips as the drones made more trips. In contrast, forager trips showed no such shift of distribution. In addition, drones made short trips but no long mating trips on days associated with a significant drop in temperature and increase of clouds compared to the previous day. These findings suggest that drones may have developed a unique flight behavior making short trips first to survey the weather conditions before flying out to the congregation area to pursue a successful mating.

Keywords: apis mellifera, drone, flight behavior, weather, RFID

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Authors: Abrudan Dumitru

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Civil infrastructures require permanent attention from the moment of taking over to the moment of demolition. One important aspect that is mandatory to be taken into consideration is crack detection. This operation, to detect cracks that can appear during the lifetime of the civil infrastructure, requires specialized personnel and, depending on the civil infrastructure, can require specialized skills (such as climbing). To overcome this issue with regard to specialized manpower, image processing is used. In our days images can be easily acquired using an unmanned aircraft vehicle system known also as a drone. The main advantages of a drone for civil infrastructure image acquisition are it can be operated at different heights, weather conditions are not an issue, being suitable to be used on rainy, windy, sunny days and so on. In this paper, we used a dataset that contains three types of images: with cracks, without cracks and with noise. To remove the noise presented in images, mathematical morphology operators (MMO) are used.

Keywords: VGG16, VGG19, image processing, mathematical morphology

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Authors: Sebastian van Delden, Matthew Anuszkiewicz, Jayse White, Scott Stolarski

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Industrial robotic manipulators have been commonplace in the manufacturing world since the early 1960s, and unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) have only begun to realize their full potential in the service industry and the military. The omnipresence of these technologies in their respective fields will only become more potent in coming years. While these technologies have greatly evolved over the years, the typical approach to human interaction with these robots has not. In the industrial robotics realm, a manipulator is typically jogged around using a teach pendant and programmed using a networked computer or the teach pendant itself via a proprietary software development platform. Drones are typically controlled using a two-handed controller equipped with throttles, buttons, and sticks, an app that can be downloaded to one’s mobile device, or a combination of both. This application-oriented work offers a novel approach to human interaction with both unmanned aerial vehicles and industrial robotic manipulators via hand gestures and movements. Two systems have been implemented, both of which use a Myo™ armband to control either a drone (DJI Spark™) or a robotic arm (Stäubli™ TX40). The methodologies developed by this work present a mapping of armband gestures (fist, finger spread, swing hand in, swing hand out, swing arm left/up/down/right, etc.) to either drone or robot arm movements. The findings of this study present the efficacy and limitations (precision and ergonomic) of hand gesture control of two distinct types of robotic technology. All source code associated with this project will be open sourced and placed on GitHub. In conclusion, this study offers a framework that maps hand and arm gestures to drone and robot arm control. The system has been implemented using current ubiquitous technologies, and these software artifacts will be open sourced for future researchers or practitioners to use in their work.

Keywords: human robot interaction, drones, gestures, robotics

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Authors: Funmilayo L. Amao, Amos O. Amao

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It has been observed that majority of the people are living in poor housing quality or totally homeless in urban center despite all governmental policies to provide housing to the public. On the supply side, various government policies in the past have been formulated towards overcoming the huge shortage through several Housing Reform Programmes. Despite these past efforts, housing continues to be a mirage to ordinary Nigerian. Currently, there are various mass housing delivery programmes such as the affordable housing scheme that utilize the Public Private Partnership effort and several Private Finance Initiative models could only provide for about 3% of the required stock. This suggests the need for a holistic solution in approaching the problem. The aim of this research is to find out the problems hindering the delivery of housing in Nigeria and its effects on housing affordability. The specific objectives are to identify the causes of housing delivery problems, to examine different housing policies over years and to suggest a way out for sustainable housing delivery. This paper also reviews the past and current housing delivery programmes in Nigeria and analyses the demand and supply side issues. It identifies the various housing delivery mechanisms in current practice. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to give you an insight into the delivery option for the sustainability of housing in Nigeria, given the existing delivery structures and the framework specified in the New National Housing Policy. The secondary data were obtained from books, journals and seminar papers. The conclusion is that we cannot copy models from other nations, but should rather evolve workable models based on our socio-cultural background to address the huge housing shortage in Nigeria. Recommendations are made in this regard.

Keywords: housing, sustainability, housing delivery, housing policy, housing affordability

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Authors: Mylena McCoggle, Shyra Wilson, Andrea Rivera, Rocio Alba-Flores

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This work introduces the use of EMGs (electromyography) from muscle sensors to develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) for pattern recognition to control a small unmanned aerial vehicle. The objective of this endeavor exhibits interfacing drone applications beyond manual control directly. MyoWare Muscle sensor contains three EMG electrodes (dual and single type) used to collect signals from the posterior (extensor) and anterior (flexor) forearm and the bicep. Collection of raw voltages from each sensor were connected to an Arduino Uno and a data processing algorithm was developed with the purpose of interpreting the voltage signals given when performing flexing, resting, and motion of the arm. Each sensor collected eight values over a two-second period for the duration of one minute, per assessment. During each two-second interval, the movements were alternating between a resting reference class and an active motion class, resulting in controlling the motion of the drone with left and right movements. This paper further investigated adding up to three sensors to differentiate between hand gestures to control the principal motions of the drone (left, right, up, and land). The hand gestures chosen to execute these movements were: a resting position, a thumbs up, a hand swipe right motion, and a flexing position. The MATLAB software was utilized to collect, process, and analyze the signals from the sensors. The protocol (machine learning tool) was used to classify the hand gestures. To generate the input vector to the ANN, the mean, root means squared, and standard deviation was processed for every two-second interval of the hand gestures. The neuromuscular information was then trained using an artificial neural network with one hidden layer of 10 neurons to categorize the four targets, one for each hand gesture. Once the machine learning training was completed, the resulting network interpreted the processed inputs and returned the probabilities of each class. Based on the resultant probability of the application process, once an output was greater or equal to 80% of matching a specific target class, the drone would perform the motion expected. Afterward, each movement was sent from the computer to the drone through a Wi-Fi network connection. These procedures have been successfully tested and integrated into trial flights, where the drone has responded successfully in real-time to predefined command inputs with the machine learning algorithm through the MyoWare sensor interface. The full paper will describe in detail the database of the hand gestures, the details of the ANN architecture, and confusion matrices results.

Keywords: artificial neural network, biosensors, electromyography, machine learning, MyoWare muscle sensors, Arduino

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Authors: Masood Varshosaz, Kamyar Hasanpour

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In recent years, we have seen growing interest in recognizing humans in drone images for post-disaster search and rescue operations. Deep learning algorithms have shown great promise in this area, but they often require large amounts of labeled data to train the models. To keep the data acquisition cost low, augmentation techniques can be used to create additional data from existing images. There are many techniques of such that can help generate variations of an original image to improve the performance of deep learning algorithms. While data augmentation is potentially assumed to improve the accuracy and robustness of the models, it is important to ensure that the performance gains are not outweighed by the additional computational cost or complexity of implementing the techniques. To this end, it is important to evaluate the impact of data augmentation on the performance of the deep learning models. In this paper, we evaluated the most currently available 2D data augmentation techniques on a standard convolutional network which was trained for recognizing humans in drone images. The techniques include rotation, scaling, random cropping, flipping, shifting, and their combination. The results showed that the augmented models perform 1-3% better compared to a base network. However, as the augmented images only contain the human parts already visible in the original images, a new data augmentation approach is needed to include the invisible parts of the human body. Thus, we suggest a new method that employs simulated 3D human models to generate new data for training the network.

Keywords: human recognition, deep learning, drones, disaster mitigation

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Authors: Eiko Takaoka, Yoshiyuki Fukushima, Koichiro Hirose, Tadashi Hasegawa

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Although all high school students in Japan are required to learn informatics, many of them do not learn this topic sufficiently. In response to this situation, we propose a support package for high school informatics classes. To examine what students learned and if they sufficiently understood the context of the lessons, a questionnaire survey was distributed to 186 students. We analyzed the results of the questionnaire and determined the weakest units, which were “basic computer configuration” and “memory and secondary storage”. We then developed a package for teaching these units. We propose that our package be applied in high school classrooms.

Keywords: computer science unplugged, computer science outreach, high school curriculum, experimental evaluation

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Authors: Muhammad R. Bello, Mamman A. Wasagu, Yahya M. Kamar

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The study investigated the effects of computer-aided instructional package (CAIP) on performance and retention of genetic concepts among secondary school students in Niger State. Quasi-experimental research design i.e. pre-test-post-test experimental and control groups were adopted for the study. The population of the study was all senior secondary school three (SS3) students’ offering biology. A sample of 223 students was randomly drawn from six purposively selected secondary schools. The researchers’ developed computer aided instructional package (CAIP) on genetic concepts was used as treatment instrument for the experimental group while the control group was exposed to the conventional lecture method (CLM). The instrument for data collection was a Genetic Performance Test (GEPET) that had 50 multiple-choice questions which were validated by science educators. A Reliability coefficient of 0.92 was obtained for GEPET using Pearson Product Moment Correlation (PPMC). The data collected were analyzed using IBM SPSS Version 20 package for computation of Means, Standard deviation, t-test, and analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). The ANOVA analysis (Fcal (220) = 27.147, P < 0.05) shows that students who received instruction with CAIP outperformed the students who received instruction with CLM and also had higher retention. The findings also revealed no significant difference in performance and retention between male and female students (tcal (103) = -1.429, P > 0.05). It was recommended amongst others that teachers should use computer-aided instructional package in teaching genetic concepts in order to improve students’ performance and retention in biology subject. Keywords: Computer-aided Instructional Package, Performance, Retention and Genetic Concepts.

Keywords: computer aided instructional package, performance, retention, genetic concepts, senior secondary school students

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Authors: Soumitri Bag Majumder, Anindita Chaudhuri

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This exploratory study delves into the perception of job dignity among delivery agents in Kolkata, focusing on both food and grocery delivery sectors. The rapid expansion of online delivery platforms in India has led to a significant rise in the delivery service industry. Despite its growth, there is a dearth of research addressing the multifaceted challenges faced by delivery agents. This study aims to bridge this gap by shedding light on their experiences. The study’s objectives include exploring the lived experiences of delivery agents, their work-life balance, and their perception of job dignity. Using a qualitative research approach, the study will conduct semi-structured in-depth interviews with a purposive sample of 10 participants from each sector, consisting of individuals with lower socio-economic backgrounds aged between 18 and 35 years. The Three-Layer Coding framework proposed by Charmaz will guide the data analysis process, encompassing open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. Through this method, the study seeks to uncover emergent themes and patterns that illuminate the participants’ perspectives on job dignity, recognition, and the challenges they encounter. By uncovering their perceptions of job dignity and the challenges they face, the research aims to contribute to the well-being of these workers and inform relevant stakeholders for a more equitable work environment.

Keywords: delivery agents, equitable work environment, perception of job dignity, work-life balance

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Authors: Z. W. Zhong, C. Xu, W. K. Choi

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To build a thin fan-out wafer-level package, the package had to be ground to a thin level. In this work, the influence of the grinding processes on the strength of the fan-out wafer-level packages was investigated. After different grinding processes, all specimens were placed on a three-point-bending fixture installed on a universal tester for three-point-bending testing, and the strength of the fan-out wafer-level packages was measured. The experiments revealed that the average flexure strength increased with the decreasing surface roughness height of the fan-out wafer-level package tested. The grinding processes had a significant influence on the strength of the fan-out wafer-level packages investigated.

Keywords: FOWLP strength, surface roughness, three-point bending, grinding

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Authors: Kulveer Sandhu

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Background: In 1999, the Government of Canada legalized the use of cannabis for the therapeutic purpose (CTP); however, its users remain highly vulnerable to stigma and are judged by care providers and nonusers of cannabis. Findings from a literature review suggest health care providers (HCPs), including nurses in palliative care settings, lack knowledge about medical cannabis. For this reason, it is important to enhance HCPs’awarenessand knowledge of medical cannabis. Significance of the Project: Nurses are the first point of contact and spend more time with patients than other care providers; it is, therefore, important for them to be informed about CTPto provide quality and equitable care for medical cannabis users. Although nurses and other HCPs want information on CTP, the topic is rarely included in their educational curriculum. The purpose of this project is to create an evidence informed Package designed to increase knowledge among palliative care nurses about CTP. The information package will empower palliative nurses to help palliative patients make informed decisions about their treatment plan. Method: The information package will include a basic overview of the endocannabinoid system, common cannabis plants and products, and methods of consumption, as well as information to help nurses better understand consumption and harm reduction. The package will also include a set of cannabis fact sheets for nurses. Each fact sheet will comprise a high-level overview with graphics followed by a description of medical cannabis with links and references. At the end of the learning package, there are five self-reflection questions that allow nurses to examine their personal values, attitudes, and practices regarding medical cannabis. These questions will help each nurse understand their personal approach towards CTP and its users.

Keywords: medical cannabis, improve knowledge, cannabis for therapeutic purpose (CTP), patient experience, palliative care

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Authors: Ludovic Fabre, Paola Melani, Patrick Lemaire

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The goal of this study was to test whether and how emotions influence drone operators in estimation skills. The empirical study was run in the context of numerical estimation. Participants saw a two-digit number together with a collection of cars. They had to indicate whether the stimuli collection was larger or smaller than the number. The two-digit numbers ranged from 12 to 27, and collections included 3-36 cars. The presentation of the collections was dynamic (each car moved 30 deg. per second on the right). Half the collections were smaller collections (including fewer than 20 cars), and the other collections were larger collections (i.e., more than 20 cars). Splits between the number of cars in a collection and the two-digit number were either small (± 1 or 2 units; e.g., the collection included 17 cars and the two-digit number was 19) or larger (± 8 or 9 units; e.g., 17 cars and '9'). Half the collections included more items (and half fewer items) than the number indicated by the two-digit number. Before and after each trial, participants saw an image inducing negative emotions (e.g., mutilations) or neutral emotions (e.g., candle) selected from International Affective Picture System (IAPS). At the end of each trial, participants had to say if the second picture was the same as or different from the first. Results showed different effects of emotions on RTs and percent errors. Participants’ performance was modulated by emotions. They were slower on negative trials compared to the neutral trials, especially on the most difficult items. They errored more on small-split than on large-split problems. Moreover, participants highly overestimated the number of cars when in a negative emotional state. These findings suggest that emotions influence numerical estimation, that effects of emotion in estimation interact with stimuli characteristics. They have important implications for understanding the role of emotions on estimation skills, and more generally, on how emotions influence cognition.

Keywords: drone operators, emotion, numerical estimation, arithmetic

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Authors: Sumeet Dwivedi, Shweta Shriwas, Raghvendra Dubey

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The number of products based on new drug delivery systems has significantly increased in the past few years, and this growth is expected to continue in the near future. These biopharmaceuticals present challenges to drug delivery scientists because of their unique nature and difficulty in delivery through conventional routes. Therefore, future research will focus on the delivery of these complex molecules through different routes, including oral, nasal, pulmonary, vaginal, rectal, etc. The aim of present study was to formulate and evaluate ethosomes of Plumeria indica flowers which may deliver the drug to targeted site more efficiently than marketed preparation and also overcome the problems related with oral administration of drug. The formulations were prepared with ethanol, lecithin, propylene glycol and were evaluated.

Keywords: ethosomes, herbal extract, plumeria alba, lecithin

Procedia PDF Downloads 233

Authors: Abidoye James Alabi

Abstract:

This study investigated the effect of video-based instructional strategy on junior secondary school academic achievement in social studies. The influence of gender on the academic achievement of student taught with video-based instructional strategy was also examined. The study adopted a pre-test and pro-test control group quasi-experimental design. Simple random sampling technique was used to select 40 students from two schools in Akure town in Ondo State. The researcher developed instructional video package on social studies concept which was used as treatment instrument for the experimental group while the control group was exposed to conventional teaching method. The instruments used in this study are social studies achievement test and instructional video package (IVP). T-test statistic was used to analyse the hypotheses. The findings revealed that experimental group performed better than the control group. It was also shown that gender has no significant effect on students’ academic achievement when exposed to an instructional video package. It was recommended that appropriate training and workshop should be organized by the government for the social studies teachers for effective use of instructional video package in order to enhance teachers productivities and learning among students in secondary schools.

Keywords: instructional video package, conventional teaching method, social studies, junior secondary school

Procedia PDF Downloads 396

Authors: Herath M. P. C. Jayaweera, Samer Hanoun

Abstract:

Path planning for on-time obstacle avoidance is an essential and challenging task that enables drones to achieve safe operation in any application domain. The level of challenge increases significantly on the obstacle avoidance technique when the drone is following a ground mobile entity (GME). This is mainly due to the change in direction and magnitude of the GME′s velocity in dynamic and unstructured environments. Force field techniques are the most widely used obstacle avoidance methods due to their simplicity, ease of use, and potential to be adopted for three-dimensional dynamic environments. However, the existing force field obstacle avoidance techniques suffer many drawbacks, including their tendency to generate longer routes when the obstacles are sideways of the drone′s route, poor ability to find the shortest flyable path, propensity to fall into local minima, producing a non-smooth path, and high failure rate in the presence of symmetrical obstacles. To overcome these shortcomings, this paper proposes an on-time three-dimensional obstacle avoidance method for drones to effectively and efficiently avoid dynamic and static obstacles in unknown environments while pursuing a GME. This on-time obstacle avoidance technique generates velocity waypoints for its obstacle-free and efficient path based on the shape of the encountered obstacles. This method can be utilized on most types of drones that have basic distance measurement sensors and autopilot-supported flight controllers. The proposed obstacle avoidance technique is validated and evaluated against existing force field methods for different simulation scenarios in Gazebo and ROS-supported PX4-SITL. The simulation results show that the proposed obstacle avoidance technique outperforms the existing force field techniques and is better suited for real-world applications.

Keywords: drones, force field methods, obstacle avoidance, path planning

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Authors: Ozlem Karabulutlu, Kiymet Yesilcicek Calik, Nazli Akar

Abstract:

Objectives: To examine fear of childbirth according to parity, gestational age, prenatal education, and obstetric history. Methods: The study was performed as a questionnaire design in a State Hospital in Kars, Turkey with 403 unselected pregnant who were recruited from the delivery unit. The data were collected via 3 questionnaires; the first with sociodemographic and obstetric features, the second with Wijma Delivery Expectance/Experience Questionnaire (W-DEQ) scale, and the third with the scale of Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). Results: The W-DEQ and BAI scores were higher in nulliparous than multiparous woman (W-DEQ 67.08±28.33, 59.87±26.91, P=0.039<0.05, BAI 18.97±9.5, 16.65±11.83, P=0.0009<0.05 respectively). Moreover, W-DEQ and BAI scores of pregnant whose gestational week was ≤37 / ≥41 and who didn’t receive training and had vaginal delivery was higher than those whose gestational week was 38-40 weeks and who received prenatal training and had cesarean delivery (W-DEQ 67.54±29.20, 56.44±22.59, 69.72±25.53 p<0.05, BAI 21.41±9.07; 15.77±11.20, 18.36±10.57 p<0.05 respectively). Both in nulliparous and multiparous, as W-DEQ score increases BAI score increases too (r=0.256; p=0.000<0.05). Conclusions: Severe fear of childbirth and anxiety was more common in nulliparous women, preterm and post-term pregnancy and who did not receive prenatal training and had vaginal delivery.

Keywords: Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), fear of birth, parity, pregnant women, Wijma Delivery Expectance/Experience Questionnaire (W-DEQ)

Procedia PDF Downloads 258

Authors: Mandisi Matyana

Abstract:

Although the South African local government is doing all the best in ensuring improved service delivery for the citizens, service delivery disparity still remains the real challenge for other municipalities. The unequal distribution of services within municipal wards is causing unequal happiness among the citizens; hence others do enjoy different provided municipal services, while others do not. It is acknowledged that less access to municipal services infringes one’s rights, such as the right to human dignity and the right to life. Some of the municipal services are basic services and they are the mainstay of human survival, such as water, housing, etc. It is quite evident that the service delivery disparity could be caused by the various factors within the local municipality affairs, including both administrative and political factors. Therefore, this study is undertaken to check and evaluate the main foundations of service delivery disparity in ensuring equal development of the state, particularly for local communities. The study used the qualitative method to collect the data from the citizens of Winnie Madikizela Mandela Local Municipality. An extensive literature was also conducted in understanding the causes of service delivery disparity. Study findings prove that the service delivery disparity could be caused by factors such as political interference in administration, corruption and fraud, elevated unemployment levels, inadequate institutional capacity, etc. Therefore, the study recommends strong community participation and constant external supervision in the local government so as to encourage openness in local government to ensure fair administration towards services to be provided.

Keywords: administration, development, municipal services, service delivery disparity, Winnie Madikizela Mandela local municipality

Procedia PDF Downloads 86