Search results for: Finite Volume Method

Authors: Juliana Amaka Ugwu

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Trapping efficiency of methyl eugenol and three locally made food-based lures were evaluated in three locations for trapping of B. dorsalis on mango homestead trees in Ibadan South west Nigeria. The treatments were methyl eugenol, brewery waste, pineapple juice, orange juice, and control (water). The experiment was laid in a Complete Randomized Block Design (CRBD) and replicated three times in each location. Data collected were subjected to analysis of variance and significant means were separated by Turkey’s test. The results showed that B. dorsalis was recorded in all locations of study. Methyl eugenol significantly (P < 0.05) trapped higher population of B. dorsalis in all the study area. The population density of B. dorsalis was highest during the ripening period of mango in all locations. The percentage trapped flies after 7 weeks were 77.85%-82.38% (methyl eugenol), 7.29%-8.64% (pineapple juice), 5.62-7.62% (brewery waste), 4.41%-5.95% (orange juice), and 0.24-0.47% (control). There were no significance differences (p > 0.05) on the population of B. dorsalis trapped in all locations. Similarly, there were no significant differences (p > 0.05) on the population of flies trapped among the food attractants. However, the three food attractants significantly (p < 0.05) trapped higher flies than control. Methyl eugenol trapped only male flies while brewery waste and other food based attractants trapped both male and female flies. The food baits tested were promising attractants for trapping B. dorsalis on mango homestead tress, hence increased dosage could be considered for monitoring and mass trapping as management strategies against fruit fly infestation.

Keywords: Attractants, trapping, mango, Bactrocera dorsalis.

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Authors: Suman Senapati, Goutam Saha

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Real world Speaker Identification (SI) application differs from ideal or laboratory conditions causing perturbations that leads to a mismatch between the training and testing environment and degrade the performance drastically. Many strategies have been adopted to cope with acoustical degradation; wavelet based Bayesian marginal model is one of them. But Bayesian marginal models cannot model the inter-scale statistical dependencies of different wavelet scales. Simple nonlinear estimators for wavelet based denoising assume that the wavelet coefficients in different scales are independent in nature. However wavelet coefficients have significant inter-scale dependency. This paper enhances this inter-scale dependency property by a Circularly Symmetric Probability Density Function (CS-PDF) related to the family of Spherically Invariant Random Processes (SIRPs) in Log Gabor Wavelet (LGW) domain and corresponding joint shrinkage estimator is derived by Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) estimator. A framework is proposed based on these to denoise speech signal for automatic speaker identification problems. The robustness of the proposed framework is tested for Text Independent Speaker Identification application on 100 speakers of POLYCOST and 100 speakers of YOHO speech database in three different noise environments. Experimental results show that the proposed estimator yields a higher improvement in identification accuracy compared to other estimators on popular Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) based speaker model and Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient (MFCC) features.

Keywords: Speaker Identification, Log Gabor Wavelet, Bayesian Bivariate Estimator, Circularly Symmetric Probability Density Function, SIRP.

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Authors: Brian A. Smith, Ronald W. McClendon, Gerrit Hoogenboom

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The mitigation of crop loss due to damaging freezes requires accurate air temperature prediction models. Previous work established that the Ward-style artificial neural network (ANN) is a suitable tool for developing such models. The current research focused on developing ANN models with reduced average prediction error by increasing the number of distinct observations used in training, adding additional input terms that describe the date of an observation, increasing the duration of prior weather data included in each observation, and reexamining the number of hidden nodes used in the network. Models were created to predict air temperature at hourly intervals from one to 12 hours ahead. Each ANN model, consisting of a network architecture and set of associated parameters, was evaluated by instantiating and training 30 networks and calculating the mean absolute error (MAE) of the resulting networks for some set of input patterns. The inclusion of seasonal input terms, up to 24 hours of prior weather information, and a larger number of processing nodes were some of the improvements that reduced average prediction error compared to previous research across all horizons. For example, the four-hour MAE of 1.40°C was 0.20°C, or 12.5%, less than the previous model. Prediction MAEs eight and 12 hours ahead improved by 0.17°C and 0.16°C, respectively, improvements of 7.4% and 5.9% over the existing model at these horizons. Networks instantiating the same model but with different initial random weights often led to different prediction errors. These results strongly suggest that ANN model developers should consider instantiating and training multiple networks with different initial weights to establish preferred model parameters.

Keywords: Decision support systems, frost protection, fruit, time-series prediction, weather modeling

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Authors: B. Golchin, N. Riahi

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One of the most significant issues as attended a lot in recent years is that of recognizing the sentiments and emotions in social media texts. The analysis of sentiments and emotions is intended to recognize the conceptual information such as the opinions, feelings, attitudes and emotions of people towards the products, services, organizations, people, topics, events and features in the written text. These indicate the greatness of the problem space. In the real world, businesses and organizations are always looking for tools to gather ideas, emotions, and directions of people about their products, services, or events related to their own. This article uses the Twitter social network, one of the most popular social networks with about 420 million active users, to extract data. Using this social network, users can share their information and opinions about personal issues, policies, products, events, etc. It can be used with appropriate classification of emotional states due to the availability of its data. In this study, supervised learning and deep neural network algorithms are used to classify the emotional states of Twitter users. The use of deep learning methods to increase the learning capacity of the model is an advantage due to the large amount of available data. Tweets collected on various topics are classified into four classes using a combination of two Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory network and a Convolutional network. The results obtained from this study with an average accuracy of 93%, show good results extracted from the proposed framework and improved accuracy compared to previous work.

Keywords: emotion classification, sentiment analysis, social networks, deep neural networks

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Authors: Yu Zhang, Ye Tian, Fang Ye Yixuan Kang

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The capacity of conventional cellular networks has reached its upper bound and it can be well handled by introducing femtocells with low-cost and easy-to-deploy. Spectrum interference issue becomes more critical in peace with the value-added multimedia services growing up increasingly in two-tier cellular networks. Spectrum allocation is one of effective methods in interference mitigation technology. This paper proposes a game-theory-based on OFDMA downlink spectrum allocation aiming at reducing co-channel interference in two-tier femtocell networks. The framework is formulated as a non-cooperative game, wherein the femto base stations are players and frequency channels available are strategies. The scheme takes full account of competitive behavior and fairness among stations. In addition, the utility function reflects the interference from the standpoint of channels essentially. This work focuses on co-channel interference and puts forward a negative logarithm interference function on distance weight ratio aiming at suppressing co-channel interference in the same layer network. This scenario is more suitable for actual network deployment and the system possesses high robustness. According to the proposed mechanism, interference exists only when players employ the same channel for data communication. This paper focuses on implementing spectrum allocation in a distributed fashion. Numerical results show that signal to interference and noise ratio can be obviously improved through the spectrum allocation scheme and the users quality of service in downlink can be satisfied. Besides, the average spectrum efficiency in cellular network can be significantly promoted as simulations results shown.

Keywords: Femtocell networks, game theory, interference mitigation, spectrum allocation.

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Authors: Sarina Md Yusof, Suhana Aiman, Mohd Khairi Zawi, Hosni Hasan, Azila Azreen Md Radzi

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Failure in mastery of motor skills proficiency during childhood has been seen as a detrimental factor for children to be physically active. Lack of motor skills proficiency tends to reduce children’s competency and confidence level to participate in physical activity. As a consequence of less participation in physical activity, children will turn to be overweight and obese. It has been suggested that children who master motor skill proficiency will be more involved in physical activity thus preventing them from being overweight. Obesity has become a serious childhood health issues worldwide. Previous studies have found that children who were overweight and obese were generally less active however these studies focused on one gender. This study aims to compare motor skill proficiency of underweight, normal-weight, overweight and obese young boys as well as to determine the relationship between motor skills proficiency and body composition. 112 boys aged between 8 to 10 years old participated in this study. Participants were assigned to four groups; underweight, normal-weight, overweight and obese using BMI-age percentile chart for children. Bruininks- Oseretsky Test Second Edition-Short Form was administered to assess their motor skill proficiency. Meanwhile, body composition was determined by the skinfold thickness measurement. Result indicated that underweight and normal children were superior in motor skills proficiency compared to overweight and obese children (p < 0.05). A significant strong inverse correlation between motor skills proficiency and body composition (r = -0.849) is noted. The findings of this study could be explained by non-contributory mass that carried by overweight and obese children leads to biomechanical movement inefficiency which will become detrimental to motor skills proficiency. It can be concluded that motor skills proficiency is inversely correlated with body composition.

Keywords: Motor skills proficiency, body composition, obesity.

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Authors: Avadhesh Yadav, V.K. Bajpai

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A solar powered air heating system using one ended evacuated tubes is experimentally investigated. A solar air heater containing forty evacuated tubes is used for heating purpose. The collector surface area is about 4.44 m2. The length and outer diameters of the outer glass tube and absorber tube are 1500, 47 and 37 mm, respectively. In this experimental setup, we have a header (heat exchanger) of square shape (190 mm x 190 mm). The length of header is 1500 mm. The header consists of a hollow pipe in the center whose diameter is 60 mm through which the air is made to flow. The experimental setup contains approximately 108 liters of water. Water is working as heat collecting medium which collects the solar heat falling on the tubes. This heat is delivered to the air flowing through the header pipe. This heat flow is due to natural convection and conduction. The outlet air temperature depends upon several factors along with air flow rate and solar radiation intensity. The study has been done for both up-flow and down-flow of air in header in similar weather conditions, at different flow rates. In the present investigations the study has been made to find the effect of intensity of solar radiations and flow rate of air on the out let temperature of the air with time and which flow is more efficient. The obtained results show that the system is highly effective for the heating in this region. Moreover, it has been observed that system is highly efficient for the particular flow rate of air. It was also observed that downflow configuration is more effective than up-flow condition at all flow rates due to lesser losses in down-flow. The results show that temperature differences of upper head and lower head, both of water and surface of pipes on the respective ends is lower in down-flow.

Keywords: air flow direction, Evacuated tube solar collector, solar air heating, solar thermal utilization.

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Authors: Natinee Thanajaro

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In the past few decades, international research on the country of origin of products has garnered significant interest, particularly in investigating the effects of consumers’ evaluation and perception. As globalization and market competition rise, international firms are seeking ways to control their labour costs and minimise taxes. Many products are outsourced and manufactured in countries with cheap labour. Consequently, the proliferation of ‘bi-national’ products has increased, raising important questions related to consumers’ perception. Moreover, the rapid growth in emerging markets, especially in Asia, has made these countries attractive options for international brands. Therefore, studying the country of origin allows firms and researchers to understand how customers perceive such information regarding the country of manufacture and the country of the brand. This study aims to investigate the influence of the country of manufacture (COM) and country of brand (COB) on Thai consumers’ perception of the brand. In addition, it embraces a different perspective on brand experience as a moderating factor. A sample of 403 Thai respondents was collected through face-to-face survey questionnaires in central Bangkok. This research employs an experiment using a factorial design to test the hypotheses. SPSS statistics software was adopted to analyse and validate the reliability of the testing of the constructs and model hypotheses. The results of this research show that the respondents positively respond to the COB more than the COM, and brand experience plays a moderating role in this research. This research provides a significant contribution to the existing literature and managerial practicality by using multi-dimensional information on the country and analyses the relationships between these dimensions.

Keywords: Brand experience, country of brand, country of manufacture, purchase intention.

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Authors: Lowai Abed

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The differences in languages play a big role in cross-cultural communication. If meanings are not translated accurately, the risk can be crucial not only on an interpersonal level, but also on the international and political levels. The use of metaphorical language by politicians can cause great confusion, often leading to statements being misconstrued. In these situations, it is the translators who struggle to put forward the intended meaning with clarity and this makes translation an important field to study and analyze when it comes to cross-cultural communication. Owing to the growing importance of language and the power of translation in politics, this research analyzes part of President Bush’s speech in 2001 in which he used the word “Crusade” which caused his statement to be misconstrued. The research uses a discourse analysis of cross-cultural communication literature which provides answers supported by historical, linguistic, and communicative perspectives. The first finding indicates that the word ‘crusade’ carries different meaning and significance in the narratives of the Western world when compared to the Middle East. The second one is that, linguistically, maintaining cultural meanings through translation is quite difficult and challenging. Third, when it comes to the cross-cultural communication perspective, the common and frequent usage of literal translation is a sign of poor strategies being followed in translation training. Based on the example of Bush’s speech, this paper hopes to highlight the weak practices in translation in cross-cultural communication which are still commonly used across the world. Translation studies have to take issues such as this seriously and attempt to find a solution. In every language, there are words and phrases that have cultural, historical and social meanings that are woven into the language. Literal translation is not the solution for this problem because that strategy is unable to convey these meanings in the target language.

Keywords: Crusade, metaphor, mistranslation, war in terror.

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Authors: Alan Walsh, Peter Walker, Michael Ellis

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There is a real danger that both practitioners and researchers considering risks associated with megaprojects ignore or underestimate the impacts of cultural risk. The paper investigates the potential impacts of a failure to achieve cultural unity between the principal actors executing a megaproject. The principle relationships include the relationships between the principle Contractors and the project stakeholders or the project stakeholders and their principle advisors, Western Consultants. This study confirms that cultural dissonance between these parties can delay or disrupt the megaproject execution and examines why cultural issues should be prioritized as a significant risk factor in megaproject delivery. This paper addresses the practical impacts and potential mitigation measures, which may reduce cultural dissonance for a megaproject's delivery. This information is retrieved from on-going case studies in live infrastructure megaprojects in Europe and the Middle East's GCC states, from Western Consultants' perspective. The collaborating researchers each have at least 30 years of construction experience and are engaged in architecture, project management and contracts management, dealing with megaprojects in Europe or the GCC. After examining the cultural interfaces they have observed during the execution of megaprojects, they conclude that globally, culture significantly influences their efficient delivery. The study finds that cultural risk is ever-present, where different nationalities co-manage megaprojects and that cultural conflict poses a real threat to the timely delivery of megaprojects. The study indicates that the higher the cultural distance between the principal actors, the more pronounced the risk, with the risk of cultural dissonance more prominent in GCC megaprojects. The findings support a more culturally aware and cohesive team approach and recommend cross-cultural training to mitigate the effects of cultural disparity.

Keywords: Cultural risk underestimation, cultural distance, megaproject characteristics, megaproject execution.

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Authors: S. Looser, W. Wehrmeyer

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Given the limited research on Small and Mediumsized Enterprises’ (SMEs) contribution to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and even scarcer research on Swiss SMEs, this paper helps to fill these gaps by enabling the identification of supranational SME parameters. Thus, the paper investigates the current state of SME practices in Switzerland and across 15 other countries. Combining the degree to which SMEs demonstrate an explicit (or business case) approach or see CSR as an implicit moral activity with the assessment of their attributes for “variety of capitalism” defines the framework of this comparative analysis. To outline Swiss small business CSR patterns in particular, 40 SME owner-managers were interviewed. A secondary data analysis of studies from different countries laid groundwork for this comparative overview of small business CSR. The paper identifies Swiss small business CSR as driven by norms, values, and by the aspiration to contribute to society, thus, as an implicit part of the day-to-day business. Similar to most Central European, Mediterranean, Nordic, and Asian countries, explicit CSR is still very rare in Swiss SMEs. Astonishingly, also British and American SMEs follow this pattern in spite of their strong and distinctly liberal market economies. Though other findings show that nationality matters this research concludes that SME culture and an informal CSR agenda are strongly formative and superseding even forces of market economies, nationally cultural patterns, and language. Hence, classifications of countries by their market system, as found in the comparative capitalism literature, do not match the CSR practices in SMEs as they do not mirror the peculiarities of their business. This raises questions on the universality and generalisability of unmediated, explicit management concepts, especially in the context of small firms.

Keywords: CSR, comparative study, cultures of capitalism, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises.

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Authors: K. C. Rajan, H. B. Rijal, Kazui Yoshida, Masanori Shukuya

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The electricity consumption in the Japanese household sector has increased with higher rate than that of other sectors. This may be because of aging and information oriented society that requires more electrical appliances to make the life better and easier, under this circumstances, energy saving is one of the essential necessity in Japanese society. To understand the way of energy use and demand response of the residential occupants, it is important to understand the structure of energy used. Home Energy Management System (HEMS) may be used for understanding the pattern and the structure of energy used. HEMS is a visualization system of the energy usage by connecting the electrical equipment in the home and thereby automatically control the energy use in each device, so that the energy saving is achieved. Therefore, the HEMS can provide with the easiest way to understand the structure of energy use. The HEMS has entered the mainstream of the Japanese market. The objective of this study is to understand the pattern of energy saving and cost saving in different regions including Japan during HEMS use. To observe thermal comfort level of HEMS managed residential buildings in Japan, the field survey was made and altogether, 1534 votes from 37 occupants related to thermal comfort, occupants’ behaviors and clothing insulation were collected and analyzed. According to the result obtained, approximately 17.9% energy saving and 8.9% cost saving is possible if HEMS is applied effectively. We found the thermal sensation and overall comfort level of the occupants is high in the studied buildings. The occupants residing in those HEMS buildings are satisfied with the thermal environment and they have accepted it. Our study concluded that the significant reduction in Japanese residential energy use can be achieved by the proper utilization of the HEMS. Better thermal comfort is also possible with the use of HEMS if energy use is managed in a rationally effective manner.

Keywords: Energy reduction, thermal comfort, HEMS market, thermal environment.

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Authors: Mirigul Altan, Huseyin Yildirim

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Plastics occupy wide place in the applications of automotive, electronics and house goods. Especially reinforced plastics become popular because of their high strength besides their advantages of low weight and easy manufacturability. In this study, mechanical and morphological properties of polypropylene (PP) and high density polyethylene (HDPE) matrix composites reinforced with surface modified nano titan dioxide (TiO2) particles were investigated. Surface modification was made by coating the nano powders with maleic anhydride grafted styrene ethylene butylene styrene (SEBS-g-MA) and silane, respectively. After surface modification, PP/TiO2 and HDPE/TiO2 composites were obtained by using twin screw extruder at titan dioxide loading of 1 wt.%, 3 wt.% and 5 wt.%. Effects of surface modification were determined by thermal and morphological analysis. SEBS-g-MA provided bridging effect between TiO2 particles and polymer matrix while silane was effective as a dispersant. Depending on that, homogenous structures without agglomeration were obtained. Mechanical tests were performed on the injection moldings of the composites for obtaining the impact strength, tensile strength, stress at break, elongation and elastic modulus. Reinforced HDPE and PP moldings gave higher tensile strength and elastic modulus due to the rigid structure of TiO2. Slight increment was seen in stress at break. Elongation and impact strength decreased due to the stiffness of the nano titan dioxide.

Keywords: High density polyethylene, mechanical properties, nano TiO2, polypropylene.

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Authors: Nikolay P. Brayanov, Anna V. Stoynova

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Model-based development approach is gaining more support and acceptance. Its higher abstraction level brings simplification of systems’ description that allows domain experts to do their best without particular knowledge in programming. The different levels of simulation support the rapid prototyping, verifying and validating the product even before it exists physically. Nowadays model-based approach is beneficial for modelling of complex embedded systems as well as a generation of code for many different hardware platforms. Moreover, it is possible to be applied in safety-relevant industries like automotive, which brings extra automation of the expensive device certification process and especially in the software qualification. Using it, some companies report about cost savings and quality improvements, but there are others claiming no major changes or even about cost increases. This publication demonstrates the level of maturity and autonomy of model-based approach for code generation. It is based on a real live automotive seat heater (ASH) module, developed using The Mathworks, Inc. tools. The model, created with Simulink, Stateflow and Matlab is used for automatic generation of C code with Embedded Coder. To prove the maturity of the process, Code generation advisor is used for automatic configuration. All additional configuration parameters are set to auto, when applicable, leaving the generation process to function autonomously. As a result of the investigation, the publication compares the quality of generated embedded code and a manually developed one. The measurements show that generally, the code generated by automatic approach is not worse than the manual one. A deeper analysis of the technical parameters enumerates the disadvantages, part of them identified as topics for our future work.

Keywords: Embedded code generation, embedded C code quality, embedded systems, model-based development.

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Authors: Khaireyah Kh. Al-Hamad, V. Nassehi, A. R. Khan

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Air pollution is a major environmental health problem, affecting developed and developing countries around the world. Increasing amounts of potentially harmful gases and particulate matter are being emitted into the atmosphere on a global scale, resulting in damage to human health and the environment. Petroleum-related air pollutants can have a wide variety of adverse environmental impacts. In the crude oil production sectors, there is a strong need for a thorough knowledge of gaseous emissions resulting from the flaring of associated gas of known composition on daily basis through combustion activities under several operating conditions. This can help in the control of gaseous emission from flares and thus in the protection of their immediate and distant surrounding against environmental degradation. The impacts of methane and non-methane hydrocarbons emissions from flaring activities at oil production facilities at Kuwait Oilfields have been assessed through a screening study using records of flaring operations taken at the gas and oil production sites, and by analyzing available meteorological and air quality data measured at stations located near anthropogenic sources. In the present study the Industrial Source Complex (ISCST3) Dispersion Model is used to calculate the ground level concentrations of methane and nonmethane hydrocarbons emitted due to flaring in all over Kuwait Oilfields. The simulation of real hourly air quality in and around oil production facilities in the State of Kuwait for the year 2006, inserting the respective source emission data into the ISCST3 software indicates that the levels of non-methane hydrocarbons from the flaring activities exceed the allowable ambient air standard set by Kuwait EPA. So, there is a strong need to address this acute problem to minimize the impact of methane and non-methane hydrocarbons released from flaring activities over the urban area of Kuwait.

Keywords: Kuwait Oilfields, ISCST3 model, flaring, Airpollution, Methane and Non-methane.

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Authors: K. Puren, H. Coetzee, V. Roos

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Uniqueness and distinctiveness of localities (referred to as genius loci or sense of place) are important to ensure people-s identification with their locality. Existing frameworks reveals that the affective dimension of environments is rarely mentioned or explored and limited public participation was used in constructing the frameworks. This research argues that the complexity of sense of place would be recognised and appropriate planning guidelines formulated by exploring and integrating the affective dimension of a site. Aims of the research therefore are to (i) explore relational dimensions between people and a natural rural landscape, (ii) to implement a participatory approach to obtain insight into different relational dimensions, and (ii) to concretise socio-affective relational dimensions into site planning guidelines. A qualitative, interdisciplinary research approach was followed and conducted on the farm Kromdraai, Vredefort Dome World Heritage Site. In essence the first phase of the study reveals various affective responses and projections of personal meanings. The findings in phase 1 informed the second phase, to involve people from various disciplines and different involvement with the area to make visual presentations of appropriate planning and design of the site in order to capture meanings of the interactions between people and their environment. Final site planning and design guidelines were formulated, based on these. This research contributed to provide planners with new possibilities of exploring the dimensions between people and places as well as to develop appropriate methods for participation to obtain insight into the underlying meanings of sites.

Keywords: Affective dimension, Sense of place, spatialplanning, Vredefort Dome World Heritage Site.

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Authors: H. Ferfera-Harrar, N. Aiouaz, N. Dairi

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Superabsorbent polymers received much attention and are used in many fields because of their superior characters to traditional absorbents, e.g., sponge and cotton. So, it is very important but challenging to prepare highly and fast-swelling superabsorbents. A reliable, efficient and low-cost technique for removing heavy metal ions from wastewater is the adsorption using bio-adsorbents obtained from biological materials, such as polysaccharides-based hydrogels superabsorbents. In this study, novel multi-functional superabsorbent composites type semi-interpenetrating polymer networks (Semi-IPNs) were prepared via graft polymerization of acrylamide onto chitosan backbone in presence of gelatin, CTS-g-PAAm/Ge, using potassium persulfate and N,N’-methylene bisacrylamide as initiator and crosslinker, respectively. These hydrogels were also partially hydrolyzed to achieve superabsorbents with ampholytic properties and uppermost swelling capacity. The formation of the grafted network was evidenced by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) and Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA). The porous structures were observed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). From TGA analysis, it was concluded that the incorporation of the Ge in the CTS-g-PAAm network has marginally affected its thermal stability. The effect of gelatin content on the swelling capacities of these superabsorbent composites was examined in various media (distilled water, saline and pH-solutions). The water absorbency was enhanced by adding Ge in the network, where the optimum value was reached at 2 wt. % of Ge. Their hydrolysis has not only greatly optimized their absorption capacity but also improved the swelling kinetic.These materials have also showed reswelling ability. We believe that these super-absorbing materials would be very effective for the adsorption of harmful metal ions from wastewater.

Keywords: Chitosan, gelatin, superabsorbent, water absorbency.

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Authors: Carolyn J. Ortega, Stephen E. Berger

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The role of the custody evaluator is perhaps one of the most controversial and risky endeavors in clinical practice. Complaints filed with licensing boards regarding a child-custody evaluation constitute the second most common reason for such an event. Although the evaluator is expected to answer for the family-law court what is in the “best interest of the child,” there is a lack of clarity on how to establish this in any empirically validated manner. Hence, practitioners must contend with a nebulous framework in formulating their methodological procedures that inherently places them at risk in an already litigious context. This study sought to qualitatively investigate patterns of practice among doctoral practitioners conducting child custody evaluations in the area of Southern California. Ten psychologists were interviewed who devoted between 25 and 100% of their California private practice to custody work. All held Ph.D. degrees with a range of eight to 36 years of experience in custody work. Semi-structured interviews were used to investigate assessment practices, ensure adherence to guidelines, risk management, and qualities of evaluators. Forty-three Specific Themes were identified using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Seven Higher Order Themes clustered on salient factors such as use of Ethics, Law, Guidelines; Parent Variables; Child Variables; Psychologist Variables; Testing; Literature; and Trends. Evaluators were aware of the ever-present reality of a licensure complaint and thus presented idiosyncratic descriptions of risk management considerations. Ambiguity about quantifying and validly tapping parenting abilities was also reviewed. Findings from this study suggested a high reliance on unstructured and observational methods in child custody practices.

Keywords: Forensic psychology, psychological testing, assessment methodology, child custody.

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Authors: R. Unnikrishnan, K. Shankar

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In the case of high-speed fighter aircrafts, seat ejection is designed mainly for the safety of the pilot in case of an emergency. Strong windblast due to the high velocity of flight is one main difficulty in clearing the tail of the aircraft. Excessive G-forces generated, immobilizes the pilot from escape. In most of the cases, seats are ejected out of the aircrafts by explosives or by rocket motors attached to the bottom of the seat. Ejection forces are primarily in the vertical direction with the objective of attaining the maximum possible velocity in a specified period of time. The safe ejection parameters are studied to estimate the critical time of ejection for various geometries and velocities of flight. An equivalent analytical 2-dimensional biomechanical model of the human spine has been modelled consisting of vertebrae and intervertebral discs with a lumped mass approach. The 24 vertebrae, which consists of the cervical, thoracic and lumbar regions, in addition to the head mass and the pelvis has been designed as 26 rigid structures and the intervertebral discs are assumed as 25 flexible joint structures. The rigid structures are modelled as mass elements and the flexible joints as spring and damper elements. Here, the motions are restricted only in the mid-sagittal plane to form a 26 degree of freedom system. The equations of motions are derived for translational movement of the spinal column. An ejection force with a linearly increasing acceleration profile is applied as vertical base excitation on to the pelvis. The dynamic vibrational response of each vertebra in time-domain is estimated.

Keywords: Biomechanical model, lumped mass, seat ejection, vibrational response.

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Authors: S. Abdi Goudazri, R. Ziaie Moayed, A. Nazeri

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Loose soils normally are of weak bearing capacity due to their structural nature. Being exposed to heavy traffic loads, they would fail in most cases. To tackle the aforementioned issue, geotechnical engineers have come up with different approaches; one of which is making use of geosynthetic-reinforced soil-aggregate systems. As these polymeric reinforcements have highlighted economic and environmentally-friendly features, they have become widespread in practice during the last decades. The present research investigates the efficiency of four different types of these reinforcements in increasing the bearing capacity of two-layered soil sections using a series California Bearing Ratio (CBR) test. The studied sections are comprised of a 10 cm-thick layer of no. 161 Firouzkooh sand (weak subgrade) and a 10 cm-thick layer of compacted aggregate materials (base course) classified as SP and GW according to the United Soil Classification System (USCS), respectively. The aggregate layer was compacted to the relative density (Dr) of 95% at the optimum water content (Wopt) of 6.5%. The applied reinforcements were including two kinds of geocomposites (type A and B), a geotextile, and a geogrid that were embedded at the interface of the lower and the upper layers of the soil-aggregate system. As the standard CBR mold was not appropriate in height for this study, the mold used for soaked CBR tests were utilized. To make a comparison between the results of stress-settlement behavior in the studied specimens, CBR values pertinent to the penetrations of 2.5 mm and 5 mm were considered. The obtained results demonstrated 21% and 24.5% increments in the amount of CBR value in the presence of geocomposite type A and geogrid, respectively. On the other hand, the effect of both geotextile and geocomposite type B on CBR values was generally insignificant in this research.

Keywords: Geosynthetics, geogrid, geotextile, CBR test, increasing bearing capacity.

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Authors: Manat Srivanit, Hokao Kazunori

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Facing the concern of the population to its environment and to climatic change, city planners are now considering the urban climate in their choices of planning. The urban climate, representing different urban morphologies across central Bangkok metropolitan area (BMA), are used to investigates the effects of both the composition and configuration of variables of urban morphology indicators on the summer diurnal range of urban climate, using correlation analyses and multiple linear regressions. Results show first indicate that approximately 92.6% of the variation in the average maximum daytime near-surface air temperature (Ta) was explained jointly by the two composition variables of urban morphology indicators including open space ratio (OSR) and floor area ratio (FAR). It has been possible to determine the membership of sample areas to the local climate zones (LCZs) using these urban morphology descriptors automatically computed with GIS and remote sensed data. Finally result found the temperature differences among zones of large separation, such as the city center could be respectively from 35.48±1.04ºC (Mean±S.D.) warmer than the outskirt of Bangkok on average for maximum daytime near surface temperature to 28.27±0.21ºC for extreme event and, can exceed as 8ºC. A spatially disaggregation of urban thermal responsiveness map would be helpful for several reasons. First, it would localize urban areas concerned by different climate behavior over summer daytime and be a good indicator of urban climate variability. Second, when overlaid with a land cover map, this map may contribute to identify possible urban management strategies to reduce heat wave effects in BMA.

Keywords: Urban climate, Urban morphology, Local climate zone, Urban planning, GIS and remote sensing

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Authors: Chua Bee Seok, Getrude Cosmas, Jasmine Adela Mutang, Shazia Iqbal Hashmi

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The aim of this study was to determine the factor structure and psychometric properties (i.e., reliability and convergent validity) of the Employee Trust Scale, a newly created instrument by the researchers. The Employee Trust Scale initially contained 82 items to measure employees’ trust toward their supervisors. A sample of 818 (343 females, 449 males) employees were selected randomly from public and private organization sectors in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. Their ages ranged from 19 to 67 years old with a mean of 34.55 years old. Their average tenure with their current employer was 11.2 years (s.d. = 7.5 years). The respondents were asked to complete the Employee Trust Scale, as well as a managerial trust questionnaire from Mishra. The exploratory factor analysis on employees’ trust toward their supervisor’s extracted three factors, labeled ‘trustworthiness’ (32 items), ‘position status’ (11 items) and ‘relationship’ (6 items) which accounted for 62.49% of the total variance. Trustworthiness factors were re-categorized into three sub factors: competency (11 items), benevolence (8 items) and integrity (13 items). All factors and sub factors of the scales demonstrated clear reliability with internal consistency of Cronbach’s Alpha above .85. The convergent validity of the Scale was supported by an expected pattern of correlations (positive and significant correlation) between the score of all factors and sub factors of the scale and the score on the managerial trust questionnaire, which measured the same construct. The convergent validity of Employee Trust Scale was further supported by the significant and positive inter-correlation between the factors and sub factors of the scale. The results suggest that the Employee Trust Scale is a reliable and valid measure. However, further studies need to be carried out in other groups of sample as to further validate the Scale.

Keywords: Employees trust scale, position status, psychometric properties, relationship, trustworthiness.

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Authors: Yepeng Cheng, Yasuhiko Morimoto

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Customer relationship analysis is vital for retail stores, especially for supermarkets. The point of sale (POS) systems make it possible to record the daily purchasing behaviors of customers as an identification point of sale (ID-POS) database, which can be used to analyze customer behaviors of a supermarket. The customer value is an indicator based on ID-POS database for detecting the customer loyalty of a store. In general, there are many supermarkets in a city, and other nearby competitor supermarkets significantly affect the customer value of customers of a supermarket. However, it is impossible to get detailed ID-POS databases of competitor supermarkets. This study firstly focused on the customer value and distance between a customer's home and supermarkets in a city, and then constructed the models based on logistic regression analysis to analyze correlations between distance and purchasing behaviors only from a POS database of a supermarket chain. During the modeling process, there are three primary problems existed, including the incomparable problem of customer values, the multicollinearity problem among customer value and distance data, and the number of valid partial regression coefficients. The improved customer value, Huff’s gravity model, and inverse attractiveness frequency are considered to solve these problems. This paper presents three types of models based on these three methods for loyal customer classification and competitors’ influence analysis. In numerical experiments, all types of models are useful for loyal customer classification. The type of model, including all three methods, is the most superior one for evaluating the influence of the other nearby supermarkets on customers' purchasing of a supermarket chain from the viewpoint of valid partial regression coefficients and accuracy.

Keywords: Customer value, Huff's Gravity Model, POS, retailer.

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Authors: I. Ahmad, A. Hannan, S. Ahmad, M. Asif, M. F. Nawaz, M. A. Tanvir, M. F. Azhar

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During this research, a comprehensive survey of tree growing areas of Faisalabad district of Pakistan was conducted to observe the symptoms, spectrum, occurrence and severity of A. nilotica and E. camaldulensis decline. Objective of current research was to investigate specific fungal pathogens involved in decline of A. nilotica and E. camaldulensis. For this purpose, infected roots, bark, neck portion, stem, branches, leaves and infected soils were collected to identify associated fungi. Potato dextrose agar (PDA) and Czepak dox agar media were used for isolations. Identification of isolated fungi was done microscopically and different fungi were identified. During survey of urban locations of Faisalabad, disease incidence on Kikar and Eucalyptus was recorded as 3.9-7.9% and 2.6-7.1% respectively. Survey of Agroforest zones of Faisalabad revealed decline incidence on kikar 7.5% from Sargodha road while on Satiana and Jhang road it was not planted. In eucalyptus trees, 4%, 8% and 0% disease incidence was observed on Jhang road, Sargodha road and Satiana road respectively. The maximum fungus isolated from the kikar tree was Drechslera australiensis (5.00%) from the stem part. Aspergillus flavus also gave the maximum value of (3.05%) from the bark. Alternaria alternata gave the maximum value of (2.05%) from leaves. Rhizopus and Mucor spp. were recorded minimum as compared to the Drechslera, Alternaria and Aspergillus. The maximum fungus isolated from the Eucalyptus tree was Armillaria luteobubalina (5.00%) from the stem part. The other fungi isolated were Macrophamina phaseolina and A. niger.

Keywords: Decline, frequency of mycoflora, A. nilotica, E. camaldulensis, Drechslera australiensis, Armillaria luteobubalina.

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Authors: A.Gandomkar, K. Fouladi

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Water is the key of national development. Wherever a spring has been dried out or a river has changed its course, the area-s people have migrated and have been scattered and the area-s civilization has lost its brilliance. Today, air pollution, global warming and ozone layer damage are as the problems of countries, but certainly in the next decade the shortage and pollution of waters will be important issues of the world. The polluted waters are more dangerous in when they are used in agriculture. Because they infect plants and these plants are used in human and livestock consumption in food chain. With the increasing population growth and after that, the increase need to facilities and raw materials, human beings has started to do haste actions and wanted or unwanted destroyed his life basin. They try to overuse and capture his environment extremely, instead of having futurism approach in sustainable use of nature. This process includes Zayanderood recession, and caused its pollution after the transition from industrial and urban areas. Zayandehrood River in Isfahan is a vital artery of a living ecosystem. Now is the location of disposal waste water of many cities, villages and existing industries. The central area of the province is an important industrial place, and its environmental situation has reached a critical stage. Not only a large number of pollution-generating industries are active in the city limits, but outside of the city and adjacent districts Zayandehrood River, heavy industries like steel, Mobarakeh Steel and other tens great units pollute wild life. This article tries to study contaminant sources of Zayanderood and their severity, and determine and discuss the share of each of these resources by major industrial centers located in areas. At the end, we represent suitable strategy.

Keywords: Environmental, industrial pollution, Zayandehrood Basin

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Authors: Elvin Çomo, Edlira Tako, Albana Hasimi, Rrapo Ormeni, Olger Gjuzi, Mirela Ndrita

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In Albania, only low-enthalpy geothermal springs and wells are known, the temperatures of some of them are almost at the upper limits of low enthalpy, reaching over 60 °C. These resources can be used to improve the country's energy balance, as well as for profitable economic purposes. The region of Elbasan has the greatest geothermal energy potential in Albania. This basin is one of the most known and most used thermal springs in our country. This area is a surface with a number of sources, located in the form of a chain, in the sector between Llixha and Hidraj and constitutes a thermo-mineral basin with stable discharge and high temperature. The sources of Elbasan Springs, with the current average flow of thermo mineral water of 12-18 l/s and its temperature 55-65 oC, have specific reserves of 39.6 GJ/m2 and potential power to install 2760 kW potential power. For the assessment of physicochemical parameters and heavy metals, water samples were taken at 5 monitoring stations throughout 2022. The levels of basic parameters were analyzed using ISO, EU and APHA standard methods. This study presents the current state of the physicochemical parameters of this thermal basin, the evaluation of these parameters for curative activities and for industrial processes, as well as the integrated utilization of geothermal energy. Thermomineral waters can be utilized for heating homes in the surrounding area or further, depending on the flow from the source or geothermal well. There is awareness among Albanian investors, medical researchers, and the community about the high economic and therapeutic efficiency of the integrated use of geothermal energy in the region and the development of the tourism sector. An analysis of the negative environmental impact from the use of thermal water is also provided.

Keywords: Geothermal energy, Llixha, physicochemical parameters, thermal water.

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Authors: Hyun Chul Cho, Hyunkyoung Oh, Hyun Yoon, Jooyeon Jin, Jae Won Lee

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Identifying, structuring, and racking the most important factors related to improving athletes’ performances could pave the way for improve training system. The purpose of this study was to identify the relative importance factors to improve performance of the of judo athletes with visual impairments, including blindness by using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). After reviewing the literature, the relative importance of factors affecting performance of the blind judo was selected. A group of expert reviewed the first draft of the questionnaires, and then finally selected performance factors were classified into the major categories of techniques, physical fitness, and psychological categories. Later, a pre-selected experts group was asked to review the final version of questionnaire and confirm the priories of performance factors. The order of priority was determined by performing pairwise comparisons using Expert Choice 2000. Results indicated that “grappling” (.303) and “throwing” (.234) were the most important lower hierarchy factors for blind judo skills. In addition, the most important physical factors affecting performance were “muscular strength and endurance” (.238). Further, among other psychological factors “competitive anxiety” (.393) was important factor that affects performance. It is important to offer psychological skills training to reduce anxiety of judo athletes with visual impairments and blindness, so they can compete in their optimal states. These findings offer insights into what should be considered when determining factors to improve performance of judo athletes with visual impairments and blindness.

Keywords: Analytic hierarchy process, blind athlete, judo, sport performance.

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Authors: Camila Bernardon, Diana Lemos, Mario Garcia, Thiago Souto, Bruno Bonifacio

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In the current technological market environment, ensuring the quality of new products has become a complex challenge. In this scenario, companies have been investing in solutions that aim to reduce the execution time of software testing and lead to cost efficiency. However, companies that have a complex and specialized testing environment usually face barriers related to costly testing processes, especially in distributed settings. Sidia Institute of Technology works on research and development for the Android platform for mobile devices in Latin America. As we work in a global software development (GSD) scope, we have faced barriers caused by failures detected lately that have caused delays in the homologation release process on Android projects. Thus, we adopt an Internal Review process, using as an alternative to reduce these failures. In this paper it was presented the experience of a homologation team adopting an Internal Review process in order to increase the performance through of improving test efficiency. Using this approach, it was possible to realize a substantial improvement in quality, reliability and timeliness of our deliveries. Through the quantitative analyses, it was possible identify a positive growth in homologation efficiency of 6% after adoption of the process. In addition, we performed a qualitative analysis from the collected data through an online questionnaire. In particular, results show that association between failure reduction and review process adoption provides the most quality that has a positive effect on project milestones. We hope this report can be helpful to other companies and the scientific community to improve their process thereby increasing competitive advantages.

Keywords: Android, GSD, improvement quality process, mobile products.

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Authors: M. Almutairi, S. Hadjiloucas

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The harmonic distortion of voltage is important in relation to power quality due to the interaction between the large diffusion of non-linear and time-varying single-phase and three-phase loads with power supply systems. However, harmonic distortion levels can be reduced by improving the design of polluting loads or by applying arrangements and adding filters. The application of passive filters is an effective solution that can be used to achieve harmonic mitigation mainly because filters offer high efficiency, simplicity, and are economical. Additionally, possible different frequency response characteristics can work to achieve certain required harmonic filtering targets. With these ideas in mind, the objective of this paper is to determine what size single tuned passive filters work in distribution networks best, in order to economically limit violations caused at a given point of common coupling (PCC). This article suggests that a single tuned passive filter could be employed in typical industrial power systems. Furthermore, constrained optimization can be used to find the optimal sizing of the passive filter in order to reduce both harmonic voltage and harmonic currents in the power system to an acceptable level, and, thus, improve the load power factor. The optimization technique works to minimize voltage total harmonic distortions (VTHD) and current total harmonic distortions (ITHD), where maintaining a given power factor at a specified range is desired. According to the IEEE Standard 519, both indices are viewed as constraints for the optimal passive filter design problem. The performance of this technique will be discussed using numerical examples taken from previous publications.

Keywords: Harmonics, passive filter, power factor, power quality.

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Authors: S. K. Fasogbon

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Chaotic system may lead to instability, extreme sensitivity and performance reduction in control systems. It is therefore important to understand the causes of such undesirable characteristics in control system especially in the automobile fuel gauges. This is because without accurate fuel gauges in automobile systems, it will be difficult if not impossible to embark on a journey whether during odd hours of the day or where fuel is difficult to obtain. To this end, this work studied the impacts of fuel tank rust and faulty component of fuel gauge system (voltage stabilizer) on the chaotic characteristics of fuel gauges. The results obtained were analyzed using Graph iSOFT package. Over the range of experiments conducted, the results obtained showed that rust effect of the fuel tank would alter the flow density, consequently the fluid pressure and ultimately the flow velocity of the fuel. The responses of the fuel gauge pointer to the faulty voltage stabilizer were erratic causing noticeable instability of gauge measurands indicated. The experiment also showed that the fuel gauge performed optimally by indicating the highest degree of accuracy when combined the effect of rust free tank and non-faulty voltage stabilizer conditions (± 6.75% measurand error) as compared to only the rust free tank situation (± 15% measurand error) and only the non-faulty voltage stabilizer condition (± 40% measurand error). The study concludes that both the fuel tank rust and the faulty voltage stabilizer gauge component have a significant effect on the sensitivity of fuel gauge and its accuracy ultimately. Also, by the reason of literature, our findings can also be said to be valid for all other fluid meters and gauges applicable in plant machineries and most hydraulic systems.

Keywords: Chaotic system, degree of accuracy, measurand, sensitivity of fuel gauge.

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