Search results for: neural network models

Authors: Vishal Raj, Noorhan Abbas

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Ambiguity in NLP (Natural Language Processing) refers to the ability of a word, phrase, sentence, or text to have multiple meanings. This results in various kinds of ambiguities such as lexical, syntactic, semantic, anaphoric and referential. This study is focused mainly on solving the issue of Lexical ambiguity. Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) is an NLP technique that aims to resolve lexical ambiguity by determining the correct meaning of a word within a given context. Most WSD solutions rely on words for training and testing, but we have used lemma and Part of Speech (POS) tokens of words for training and testing. Lemma adds generality and POS adds properties of word into token. We have designed a method to create an affinity matrix to calculate the affinity between any pair of lemma_POS (a token where lemma and POS of word are joined by underscore) of given training set. Additionally, we have devised an algorithm to create the sense clusters of tokens using affinity matrix under hierarchy of POS of lemma. Furthermore, three different mechanisms to predict the sense of target word using the affinity/similarity value are devised. Each contextual token contributes to the sense of target word with some value and whichever sense gets higher value becomes the sense of target word. So, contextual tokens play a key role in creating sense clusters and predicting the sense of target word, hence, the model is named Contextual SenSe Model (CSM). CSM exhibits a noteworthy simplicity and explication lucidity in contrast to contemporary deep learning models characterized by intricacy, time-intensive processes, and challenging explication. CSM is trained on SemCor training data and evaluated on SemEval test dataset. The results indicate that despite the naivety of the method, it achieves promising results when compared to the Most Frequent Sense (MFS) model.

Keywords: Word Sense Disambiguation, WSD, Contextual SenSe Model, Most Frequent Sense, part of speech, POS, Natural Language Processing, NLP, OOV, out of vocabulary, ELMo, Embeddings from Language Model, BERT, Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, Word2Vec, lemma_POS, Algorithm.

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Authors: Rawan A. Abdelrazeq, Ahmed M. Khalafallah, Nabil A. Kartam

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Selection of competent contractors for construction projects is usually accomplished through competitive bidding or negotiated contracting in which the contract bid price is the basic criterion for selection. The evaluation of contractor’s safety performance is still not a typical criterion in the selection process, despite the existence of various safety prequalification procedures. There is a critical need for practical and automated systems that enable owners and decision makers to evaluate contractor safety performance, among other important contractor selection criteria. These systems should ultimately favor safety-conscious contractors to be selected by the virtue of their past good safety records and current safety programs. This paper presents an exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach to develop a framework for an automated decision support system that evaluates contractor safety performance based on a multitude of indicators and metrics that have been identified through a comprehensive review of construction safety research, and a survey distributed to domain experts. The framework is developed in three phases: (1) determining the indicators that depict contractor current and past safety performance; (2) soliciting input from construction safety experts regarding the identified indicators, their metrics, and relative significance; and (3) designing a decision support system using relational database models to integrate the identified indicators and metrics into a system that assesses and rates the safety performance of contractors. The proposed automated system is expected to hold several advantages including: (1) reducing the likelihood of selecting contractors with poor safety records; (2) enhancing the odds of completing the project safely; and (3) encouraging contractors to exert more efforts to improve their safety performance and practices in order to increase their bid winning opportunities which can lead to significant safety improvements in the construction industry. This should prove useful to decision makers and researchers, alike, and should help improve the safety record of the construction industry.

Keywords: Construction safety, contractor selection, decision support system, relational database.

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Authors: Sujing Wang, Song Wang, Jian Zhang, Qiang Xu

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Flaring emissions during abnormal operating conditions such as plant start-ups, shut-downs, and upsets in chemical process industries (CPI) are usually significant. Flare minimization can help to save raw material and energy for CPI plants, and to improve local environmental sustainability. In this paper, a systematic methodology based on plant-wide dynamic simulation is presented for CPI plant flare minimizations under abnormal operating conditions. Since off-specification emission sources are inevitable during abnormal operating conditions, to significantly reduce flaring emission in a CPI plant, they must be either recycled to the upstream process for online reuse, or stored somewhere temporarily for future reprocessing, when the CPI plant manufacturing returns to stable operation. Thus, the off-spec products could be reused instead of being flared. This can be achieved through the identification of viable design and operational strategies during normal and abnormal operations through plant-wide dynamic scheduling, simulation, and optimization. The proposed study includes three stages of simulation works: (i) developing and validating a steady-state model of a CPI plant; (ii) transiting the obtained steady-state plant model to the dynamic modeling environment; and refining and validating the plant dynamic model; and (iii) developing flare minimization strategies for abnormal operating conditions of a CPI plant via a validated plant-wide dynamic model. This cost-effective methodology has two main merits: (i) employing large-scale dynamic modeling and simulations for industrial flare minimization, which involves various unit models for modeling hundreds of CPI plant facilities; (ii) dealing with critical abnormal operating conditions of CPI plants such as plant start-up and shut-down. Two virtual case studies on flare minimizations for start-up operation (over 50% of emission savings) and shut-down operation (over 70% of emission savings) of an ethylene plant have been employed to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed study.

Keywords: Flare minimization, large-scale modeling and simulation, plant shut-down, plant start-up.

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Authors: Umberto Di Staso, Marco Soave, Alessio Giori, Federico Prandi, Raffaele De Amicis

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The increasing availability of information about earth surface elevation (Digital Elevation Models DEM) generated from different sources (remote sensing, Aerial Images, Lidar) poses the question about how to integrate and make available to the most than possible audience this huge amount of data. In order to exploit the potential of 3D elevation representation the quality of data management plays a fundamental role. Due to the high acquisition costs and the huge amount of generated data, highresolution terrain surveys tend to be small or medium sized and available on limited portion of earth. Here comes the need to merge large-scale height maps that typically are made available for free at worldwide level, with very specific high resolute datasets. One the other hand, the third dimension increases the user experience and the data representation quality, unlocking new possibilities in data analysis for civil protection, real estate, urban planning, environment monitoring, etc. The open-source 3D virtual globes, which are trending topics in Geovisual Analytics, aim at improving the visualization of geographical data provided by standard web services or with proprietary formats. Typically, 3D Virtual globes like do not offer an open-source tool that allows the generation of a terrain elevation data structure starting from heterogeneous-resolution terrain datasets. This paper describes a technological solution aimed to set up a so-called “Terrain Builder”. This tool is able to merge heterogeneous-resolution datasets, and to provide a multi-resolution worldwide terrain services fully compatible with CesiumJS and therefore accessible via web using traditional browser without any additional plug-in.

Keywords: Terrain builder, WebGL, virtual globe, CesiumJS, tiled map service, TMS, height-map, regular grid, Geovisual analytics, DTM.

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Authors: Najaf Hedayat

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Food and fibre production in arid and semi-arid regions has emerged as one of the major challenges for various socio-economic and political reasons such as the food security and self-sufficiency. Productive use of the renewable water resources has risen on top ofthe decision-making agenda. For this reason, efficient operation and maintenance of modern irrigation and drainage schemes become part and parcel and indispensible reality in agricultural policy making arena. The aim of this paper is to investigate the complexity of operating and maintaining such schemes, mainly focussing on challenges which enhance and opportunities that impedsustainable food and fibre production. The methodology involved using secondary data complemented byroutine observations and stakeholders views on issues that influence the O&M in the Dez command area. The SPSS program was used as an analytical framework for data analysis and interpretation.Results indicate poor application efficiency in most croplands, much of which is attributed to deficient operation of conveyance and distribution canals. These in turn, are reportedly linked to inadequate maintenance of the pumping stations and hydraulic structures like turnouts,flumes and other control systems particularly in the secondary and tertiary canals. Results show that the aforementioned deficiencies have been the major impediment to establishing regular flow toward the farm gates which subsequently undermine application efficiency and tillage operationsat farm level. Results further show that accumulative impact of such deficiencies has been the major causes of poorcrop yield and quality that deem production system in these croplands uneconomic. Results further show that the present state might undermine the sustainability of agricultural system in the command area. The overall conclusion being that present water management is unlikely to be responsive to challenges that the sector faces. And in the absence of coherent measures to shift the status quo situation in favour of more productive resource use, it would be hard to fulfil the objectives of the National Economic and Socio-cultural Development Plans.

Keywords: renewable water resources, Dez scheme, irrigationand drainage, sustainable crop production, O&M

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Authors: Barbara Vojvodikova, Katerina Jupova, Iva Ticha

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Cities in their historical evolution have always adapted their internal structure to the needs of society (for example protective city walls during classicism era lost their defense function, became unnecessary, were demolished and gave space for new features such as roads, museums or parks). Today it is necessary to modify the internal structure of the city in order to minimize the impact of climate changes on the environment of the population. This article discusses the results of the Urban Climate model owned by VITO, which was carried out as part of a project from the European Union's Horizon grant agreement No 730004 Pan-European Urban Climate Services Climate-Fit city. The use of the model was aimed at changes in land use and land cover in cities related to urban heat islands (UHI). The task of the application was to evaluate possible land use change scenarios in connection with city requirements and ideas. Two pilot areas in the Czech Republic were selected. One is Ostrava and the other Hodonín. The paper provides a demonstration of the application of the model for various possible future development scenarios. It contains an assessment of the suitability or inappropriateness of scenarios of future development depending on the temperature increase. Cities that are preparing to reconstruct the public space are interested in eliminating proposals that would lead to an increase in temperature stress as early as in the assignment phase. If they have evaluation on the unsuitability of some type of design, they can limit it into the proposal phases. Therefore, especially in the application of models on Local level - in 1 m spatial resolution, it was necessary to show which type of proposals would create a significant temperature island in its implementation. Such a type of proposal is considered unsuitable. The model shows that the building itself can create a shady place and thus contribute to the reduction of the UHI. If it sensitively approaches the protection of existing greenery, this new construction may not pose a significant problem. More massive interventions leading to the reduction of existing greenery create a new heat island space.

Keywords: Heat islands, land use, urban climate model.

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Authors: Swathi Ganesan, Nalinda Somasiri, Rebecca Jeyavadhanam, Gayathri Karthick

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The COVID-19 crisis presents a substantial and critical hazard to worldwide health. Since the occurrence of the disease in late January 2020 in the UK, the number of infected people confirmed to acquire the illness has increased tremendously across the country, and the number of individuals affected is undoubtedly considerably high. The purpose of this research is to figure out a predictive machine learning (ML) archetypal that could forecast the COVID-19 cases within the UK. This study concentrates on the statistical data collected from 31st January 2020 to 31st March 2021 in the United Kingdom. Information on total COVID-19 cases registered, new cases encountered on a daily basis, total death registered, and patients’ death per day due to Coronavirus is collected from World Health Organization (WHO). Data preprocessing is carried out to identify any missing values, outliers, or anomalies in the dataset. The data are split into 8:2 ratio for training and testing purposes to forecast future new COVID-19 cases. Support Vector Machine (SVM), Random Forest (RF), and linear regression (LR) algorithms are chosen to study the model performance in the prediction of new COVID-19 cases. From the evaluation metrics such as r-squared value and mean squared error, the statistical performance of the model in predicting the new COVID-19 cases is evaluated. RF outperformed the other two ML algorithms with a training accuracy of 99.47% and testing accuracy of 98.26% when n = 30. The mean square error obtained for RF is 4.05e11, which is lesser compared to the other predictive models used for this study. From the experimental analysis, RF algorithm can perform more effectively and efficiently in predicting the new COVID-19 cases, which could help the health sector to take relevant control measures for the spread of the virus.

Keywords: COVID-19, machine learning, supervised learning, unsupervised learning, linear regression, support vector machine, random forest.

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Authors: Corrado Grassi, Achim Schröter, Yves Gloy, Thomas Gries

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Air jet weaving is the most productive, but also the most energy consuming weaving method. Increasing energy costs and environmental impact are constantly a challenge for the manufacturers of weaving machines. Current technological developments concern with low energy costs, low environmental impact, high productivity, and constant product quality. The high degree of energy consumption of the method can be ascribed to the high need of compressed air. An energy efficiency method is applied to the air jet weaving technology. Such method identifies and classifies the main relevant energy consumers and processes from the exergy point of view and it leads to the identification of energy efficiency potentials during the weft insertion process. Starting from the design phase, energy efficiency is considered as the central requirement to be satisfied. The initial phase of the method consists of an analysis of the state of the art of the main weft insertion components in order to point out a prioritization of the high demanding energy components and processes. The identified major components are investigated to reduce the high demand of energy of the weft insertion process. During the interaction of the flow field coming from the relay nozzles within the profiled reed, only a minor part of the stream is really accelerating the weft yarn, hence resulting in large energy inefficiency. Different tools such as FEM analysis, CFD simulation models and experimental analysis are used in order to design a more energy efficient design of the involved components in the filling insertion. A different concept for the metal strip of the profiled reed is developed. The developed metal strip allows a reduction of the machine energy consumption. Based on a parametric and aerodynamic study, the designed reed transmits higher values of the flow power to the filling yarn. The innovative reed fulfills both the requirement of raising energy efficiency and the compliance with the weaving constraints.

Keywords: Air jet weaving, aerodynamic simulation, energy efficiency, experimental measurements, power costs, weft insertion.

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Authors: R. Sekula

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Epoxy composites are broadly used as an electrical insulation for the high voltage applications since only such materials can fulfill particular mechanical, thermal, and dielectric requirements. However, properties of the final product are strongly dependent on proper manufacturing process with minimized material failures, as too large shrinkage, voids and cracks. Therefore, application of proper materials (epoxy, hardener, and filler) and process parameters (mold temperature, filling time, filling velocity, initial temperature of internal parts, gelation time), as well as design and geometric parameters are essential features for final quality of the produced components. In this paper, an approach for three-dimensional modeling of all molding stages, namely filling, curing and post-curing is presented. The reactive molding simulation tool is based on a commercial CFD package, and include dedicated models describing viscosity and reaction kinetics that have been successfully implemented to simulate the reactive nature of the system with exothermic effect. Also a dedicated simulation procedure for stress and shrinkage calculations, as well as simulation results are presented in the paper. Second part of the paper is dedicated to recent developments on formulations of functional composites for electrical insulation applications, focusing on thermally conductive materials. Concepts based on filler modifications for epoxy electrical composites have been presented, including the results of the obtained properties. Finally, having in mind tough environmental regulations, in addition to current process and design aspects, an approach for product re-design has been presented focusing on replacement of epoxy material with the thermoplastic one. Such “design-for-recycling” method is one of new directions associated with development of new material and processing concepts of electrical products and brings a lot of additional research challenges. For that, one of the successful products has been presented to illustrate the presented methodology.

Keywords: Curing, epoxy insulation, numerical simulations, recycling.

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Authors: Dejana Bouillet, Vlatka Domović

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Both policymakers and researchers recognize that participating in early childhood education and care (ECEC) is useful for all children, especially for those who are exposed to the high risk of social exclusion. Social exclusion of children is understood as a multidimensional construct including economic, social, cultural, health, and other aspects of disadvantage and deprivation, which individually or combined can have an unfavorable effect on the current life and development of a child, as well as on the child’s development and on disadvantaged life chances in adult life. ECEC institutions should be able to promote educational approaches that portray developmental, cultural, language, and other diversity amongst children. However, little is known about the ways in which Croatian ECEC institutions recognize and respect the diversity of children and their families and how they respond to their educational needs. That is why this paper is dedicated to the analysis of the capacities of ECEC professionals to respond to the demands of educational needs of this very diverse group of children and their families. The results obtained in the frame of the project “Models of response to educational needs of children at risk of social exclusion in ECEC institutions,” funded by the Croatian Science Foundation, will be presented. The research methodology arises from explanations of educational processes and risks of social exclusion as a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon. The preliminary results of the qualitative data analysis of educational practices regarding capacities to identify and appropriately respond to the requirements of children at risk of social exclusion will be presented. The data have been collected by interviewing educational staff in 10 Croatian ECEC institutions (n = 10). The questions in the interviews were related to various aspects of inclusive institutional policy, culture, and practices. According to the analysis, it is possible to conclude that Croatian ECEC professionals are still faced with great challenges in the process of implementation of inclusive policies, culture, and practices. There are several baselines of this conclusion. The interviewed educational professionals are not familiar enough with the whole complexity and diversity of needs of children at risk of social exclusion, and the ECEC institutions do not have enough resources to provide all interventions that these children and their families need.

Keywords: children at risk of social exclusion, ECEC professionals, inclusive policies, culture and practices, interpretative phenomenological analysis

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Authors: Antonios Paraskevas, Michael Madas

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For a university to maintain its international competitiveness in education, it is essential to recruit qualitative academic staff as it constitutes its most valuable asset. This selection demonstrates a significant role in achieving strategic objectives, particularly by emphasizing a firm commitment to exceptional student experience and innovative teaching and learning practices of high quality. In this vein, the appropriate selection of academic staff establishes a very important factor of competitiveness, efficiency and reputation of an academic institute. Within this framework, our work demonstrates a comprehensive methodological concept that emphasizes on the multi-criteria nature of the problem and on how decision makers could utilize our approach in order to proceed to the appropriate judgment. The conceptual framework introduced in this paper is built upon a hybrid neutrosophic method based on the Neutrosophic Analytical Hierarchy Process (N-AHP), which uses the theory of neutrosophy sets and is considered suitable in terms of significant degree of ambiguity and indeterminacy observed in decision-making process. To this end, our framework extends the N-AHP by incorporating the Neutrosophic Delphi Method (N-DM). By applying the N-DM, we can take into consideration the importance of each decision-maker and their preferences per evaluation criterion. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed model stands out within the realm of related literature as one of the few studies to employ N-DM in the context of academic staff selection. As a case study, it was decided to use our method to a real problem of academic personnel selection, having as main goal to enhance the algorithm proposed in previous scholars’ work, and thus taking care of the inherit ineffectiveness which becomes apparent in traditional multi-criteria decision-making methods when dealing with situations alike. As a further result, we prove that our method demonstrates greater applicability and reliability when compared to other decision models.

Keywords: Analytical Hierarchy Process, Delphi Method, Multi-criteria decision making methods, neutrosophic set theory, personnel recruitment.

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Authors: Harshit Vallecha, Prabha Bhola

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‘Energy for all’, is a global issue of concern for the past many years. Despite the number of technological advancements and innovations, significant numbers of people are living without access to electricity around the world. India, an emerging economy, tops the list of nations having the maximum number of residents living off the grid, thus raising global attention in past few years to provide clean and sustainable energy access solutions to all of its residents. It is evident from developed economies that centralized planning and electrification alone is not sufficient for meeting energy security. Implementation of off-grid and consumer-driven energy models like Decentralized Renewable Energy (DRE) systems have played a significant role in meeting the national energy demand in developed nations. Cases of DRE systems have been reported in developing countries like India for the past few years. This paper attempts to profile the status of DRE projects in the Indian context with their scope and relevance to ensure universal electrification. Diversified cases of DRE projects, particularly solar, biomass and micro hydro are identified in different Indian states. Critical factors affecting the sustainability of DRE projects are extracted with their interlinkages in the context of developers, beneficiaries and promoters involved in such projects. Socio-techno-economic indicators are identified through similar cases in the context of DRE projects. Exploratory factor analysis is performed to evaluate the critical sustainability factors followed by regression analysis to establish the relationship between the dependent and independent factors. The generated EFA-Regression model provides a basis to develop the sustainability and replicability framework for broader coverage of DRE projects in developing nations in order to attain the goal of universal electrification with least carbon emissions.

Keywords: Climate change, decentralized generation, electricity access, renewable energy.

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Authors: P. V. Pramila, V. Mahesh

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Pulmonary Function Tests are important non-invasive diagnostic tests to assess respiratory impairments and provides quantifiable measures of lung function. Spirometry is the most frequently used measure of lung function and plays an essential role in the diagnosis and management of pulmonary diseases. However, the test requires considerable patient effort and cooperation, markedly related to the age of patients resulting in incomplete data sets. This paper presents, a nonlinear model built using Multivariate adaptive regression splines and Random forest regression model to predict the missing spirometric features. Random forest based feature selection is used to enhance both the generalization capability and the model interpretability. In the present study, flow-volume data are recorded for N= 198 subjects. The ranked order of feature importance index calculated by the random forests model shows that the spirometric features FVC, FEF25, PEF, FEF25-75, FEF50 and the demographic parameter height are the important descriptors. A comparison of performance assessment of both models prove that, the prediction ability of MARS with the `top two ranked features namely the FVC and FEF25 is higher, yielding a model fit of R2= 0.96 and R2= 0.99 for normal and abnormal subjects. The Root Mean Square Error analysis of the RF model and the MARS model also shows that the latter is capable of predicting the missing values of FEV1 with a notably lower error value of 0.0191 (normal subjects) and 0.0106 (abnormal subjects) with the aforementioned input features. It is concluded that combining feature selection with a prediction model provides a minimum subset of predominant features to train the model, as well as yielding better prediction performance. This analysis can assist clinicians with a intelligence support system in the medical diagnosis and improvement of clinical care.

Keywords: FEV1, Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines Pulmonary Function Test, Random Forest.

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Authors: Victor Maldonado

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Recent concerns of the growing impact of aviation on climate change has prompted the emergence of a field referred to as Sustainable or “Green” Aviation dedicated to mitigating the harmful impact of aviation related CO2 emissions and noise pollution on the environment. In the current paper, a unique “green” business jet aircraft called the TransAtlantic was designed (using analytical formulation common in conceptual design) in order to show the feasibility for transatlantic passenger air travel with an aircraft weighing less than 10,000 pounds takeoff weight. Such an advance in fuel efficiency will require development and integration of advanced and emerging aerospace technologies. The TransAtlantic design is intended to serve as a research platform for the development of technologies such as active flow control. Recent advances in the field of active flow control and how this technology can be integrated on a sub-scale flight demonstrator are discussed in this paper. Flow control is a technique to modify the behavior of coherent structures in wall-bounded flows (over aerodynamic surfaces such as wings and turbine nozzles) resulting in improved aerodynamic cruise and flight control efficiency. One of the key challenges to application in manned aircraft is development of a robust high-momentum actuator that can penetrate the boundary layer flowing over aerodynamic surfaces. These deficiencies may be overcome in the current development and testing of a novel electromagnetic synthetic jet actuator which replaces piezoelectric materials as the driving diaphragm. One of the overarching goals of the TranAtlantic research platform include fostering national and international collaboration to demonstrate (in numerical and experimental models) reduced CO2/ noise pollution via development and integration of technologies and methodologies in design optimization, fluid dynamics, structures/ composites, propulsion, and controls.

Keywords: Aircraft Design, Sustainable “Green” Aviation, Active Flow Control, Aerodynamics.

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Authors: Kung-Jen Tu, Danny Vernatha

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To assist individual departments within universities in their energy management tasks, this study explores the application of Building Information Modeling in establishing the ‘BIM based Energy Management Support System’ (BIM-EMSS). The BIM-EMSS consists of six components: (1) sensors installed for each occupant and each equipment, (2) electricity sub-meters (constantly logging lighting, HVAC, and socket electricity consumptions of each room), (3) BIM models of all rooms within individual departments’ facilities, (4) data warehouse (for storing occupancy status and logged electricity consumption data), (5) building energy management system that provides energy managers with various energy management functions, and (6) energy simulation tool (such as eQuest) that generates real time 'standard energy consumptions' data against which 'actual energy consumptions' data are compared and energy efficiency evaluated. Through the building energy management system, the energy manager is able to (a) have 3D visualization (BIM model) of each room, in which the occupancy and equipment status detected by the sensors and the electricity consumptions data logged are displayed constantly; (b) perform real time energy consumption analysis to compare the actual and standard energy consumption profiles of a space; (c) obtain energy consumption anomaly detection warnings on certain rooms so that energy management corrective actions can be further taken (data mining technique is employed to analyze the relation between space occupancy pattern with current space equipment setting to indicate an anomaly, such as when appliances turn on without occupancy); and (d) perform historical energy consumption analysis to review monthly and annually energy consumption profiles and compare them against historical energy profiles. The BIM-EMSS was further implemented in a research lab in the Department of Architecture of NTUST in Taiwan and implementation results presented to illustrate how it can be used to assist individual departments within universities in their energy management tasks.

Keywords: Sensor, electricity sub-meters, database, energy anomaly detection.

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Authors: Ioannis I. Αngeli

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Worldwide and mainly in the European Union, many standards, regulations, models and systems exists for the evaluation and identification of stakeholders’ requirements of individual universities and higher education (HE) in general. All systems are targeting to measure or evaluate the Universities’ Quality Assurance Systems and the services offered to the recipients of HE, mainly the students. Numerous surveys were conducted in the past either by each university or by organized bodies to identify the students’ satisfaction or to evaluate to what extent these requirements are fulfilled. In this paper, the main results of an ongoing 6-year joint research will be presented very briefly. This research deals with an in depth investigation of student’s satisfaction, students personal requirements, a cup analysis among these two parameters and compares different universities. Through this research an attempt will be made to address four very important questions in higher education establishments (HEE): (1) Are there any common requirements, parameters, good practices or questions that apply to a large number of universities that will assure that students’ requirements are fulfilled? (2) Up to what extent the individual programs of HEE fulfil the requirements of the stakeholders? (3) Are there any similarities on specific programs among European HEE? (4) To what extent the knowledge acquired in a specific course program is utilized or used in a specific country? For the execution of the research an internationally accepted questionnaire(s) was used to evaluate up to what extent the students’ requirements and satisfaction were fulfilled in 2012 and five years later (2017). Samples of students and or universities were taken from many European Universities. The questionnaires used, the sampling method and methodology adopted, as well as the comparison tables and results will be very valuable to any university that is willing to follow the same route and methodology or compare the results with their own HHE. Apart from the unique methodology, valuable results are demonstrated from the four case studies. There is a great difference between the student’s expectations or importance from what they are getting from their universities (in all parameters they are getting less). When there is a crisis or budget cut in HEE there is a direct impact to students. There are many differences on subjects taught in European universities.

Keywords: Quality in higher education, students’ requirements, education standards, student’s survey, stakeholder’s requirements, Mechanical Engineering courses.

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Authors: Supriya Gupta, Paresh Chokshi

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Polymer-particle interactions can be effectively utilized to produce composites that possess physicochemical properties superior to that of neat polymer. The incorporation of fillers with dimensions comparable to polymer chain size produces composites with extra-ordinary properties owing to very high surface to volume ratio. The dispersion of nanoparticles is achieved by inducing steric repulsion realized by grafting particles with polymeric chains. A comprehensive understanding of the interparticle interaction between these functionalized nanoparticles plays an important role in the synthesis of a stable polymer nanocomposite. With the focus on incorporation of clay sheets in a polymer matrix, we theoretically construct the polymer mediated interparticle potential for two nanosheets grafted with polymeric chains. The self-consistent field theory (SCFT) is employed to obtain the inhomogeneous composition field under equilibrium. Unlike the continuum models, SCFT is built from the microscopic description taking in to account the molecular interactions contributed by both intra- and inter-chain potentials. We present the results of SCFT calculations of the interaction potential curve for two grafted nanosheets immersed in the matrix of polymeric chains of dissimilar chemistry to that of the grafted chains. The interaction potential is repulsive at short separation and shows depletion attraction for moderate separations induced by high grafting density. It is found that the strength of attraction well can be tuned by altering the compatibility between the grafted and the mobile chains. Further, we construct the interaction potential between two nanosheets grafted with diblock copolymers with one of the blocks being chemically identical to the free polymeric chains. The interplay between the enthalpic interaction between the dissimilar species and the entropy of the free chains gives rise to a rich behavior in interaction potential curve obtained for two separate cases of free chains being chemically similar to either the grafted block or the free block of the grafted diblock chains.

Keywords: Clay nanosheets, polymer brush, polymer nanocomposites, self-consistent field theory.

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Authors: Yi Yang, Jiasong Sun

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Almost every aspect of our daily lives is now intertwined with some degree of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI courses draw on knowledge from disciplines as diverse as computer science, psychology, design principles, anthropology and more. The HCI courses in the Department of Electronics at Tsinghua University, known as the Media and Cognition course, is constantly updated to reflect the most advanced technological advances, such as virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence-based interaction. For more than a decade, this course has used an interest-based approach to teaching, in which students proactively propose some research-based questions and collaborate with teachers, using course knowledge to explore potential solutions. Semantic communication plays a key role in facilitating understanding and interaction between users and computer systems, ultimately enhancing system usability and user experience. The advancements in AI-generated technology, which has gained significant attention from both academia and industry in recent years, are exemplified by language models like GPT-3 that generate human-like dialogues from given prompts. The latest version of the HCI course practices a semantic communication platform based on AI-generated techniques. We explored a student-centered model and proposed an interest-based teaching method. Students are no longer just recipients of knowledge, but become active participants in the learning process driven by personal interests, thereby encouraging students to take responsibility for their own education. One of the latest results of this teaching approach in the course "Media and Cognition" is a student proposal to develop a semantic communication platform rooted in artificial intelligence generative technologies. The platform solves a key challenge in communications technology: the ability to preserve visual signals. The interest-based approach emphasizes personal curiosity and active participation, and the proposal of an artificial intelligence-generated semantic communication platform is an example and successful result of how students can exert greater creativity when they have the power to control their own learning.

Keywords: Human-computer interaction, media and cognition course, semantic communication, retain ability, prompts.

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Authors: Wajiha Javed, Arsalan Jabbar, Nelofer Mehboob, Muhammad Tafseer, Zahid Memon

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Introduction: Researchers globally have strived to explore diverse factors that augment the continuation and uptake of family planning methods. Clients’ satisfaction is one of the core determinants facilitating continuation of family planning methods. There is a major debate yet scanty evidence to contrast public and private sectors with respect to client satisfaction. The objective of this study is to compare quality-of-care provided by public and private sectors of Pakistan through a client satisfaction lens. Methods: We used Pakistan Demographic Heath Survey 2012-13 dataset on 3133 women. Ten different multivariate models were made. to explore the relationship between client satisfaction and dependent outcome after adjusting for all known confounding factors and results are presented as OR and AOR (95% CI). Results: Multivariate analyses showed that clients were less satisfied in contraceptive provision from private sector as compared to public sector (AOR 0.92, 95% CI 0.63-1.68) even though the result was not statistically significant. Clients were more satisfied from private sector as compared to the public sector with respect to other determinants of quality-of-care follow-up care (AOR 3.29, 95% CI 1.95-5.55), infection prevention (AOR 2.41, 95% CI 1.60-3.62), counseling services (AOR 2.01, 95% CI 1.27-3.18, timely treatment (AOR 3.37, 95% CI 2.20-5.15), attitude of staff (AOR 2.23, 95% CI 1.50-3.33), punctuality of staff (AOR 2.28, 95% CI 1.92-4.13), timely referring (AOR 2.34, 95% CI 1.63-3.35), staff cooperation (AOR 1.75, 95% CI 1.22-2.51) and complications handling (AOR 2.27, 95% CI 1.56-3.29). Discussion: Public sector has successfully attained substantial satisfaction levels with respect to provision of contraceptives, but it contrasts previous literature from a multi country studies. Our study though in is concordance with a study from Tanzania where public sector was more likely to offer family planning services to clients as compared to private facilities. Conclusion: In majority of the developing countries, public sector is more involved in FP service provision; however, in Pakistan clients’ satisfaction in private sector is more, which opens doors for public-private partnerships and collaboration in the near future. 

Keywords: Client satisfaction, Family Planning, Public private partnership, Quality of care

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Authors: C. Ardil

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This paper presents an original application of multiple criteria decision making analysis theory to the evaluation of aircraft selection problem. The selection of an optimal, efficient and reliable fleet, network and operations planning policy is one of the most important factors in aircraft selection problem. Given that decision making in aircraft selection involves the consideration of a number of opposite criteria and possible solutions, such a selection can be considered as a multiple criteria decision making analysis problem. This study presents a new integrated approach to decision making by considering the multiple criteria utility theory and the maximal regret minimization theory methods as well as aircraft technical, economical, and environmental aspects. Multiple criteria decision making analysis method uses different normalization techniques to allow criteria to be aggregated with qualitative and quantitative data of the decision problem. Therefore, selecting a suitable normalization technique for the model is also a challenge to provide data aggregation for the aircraft selection problem. To compare the impact of different normalization techniques on the decision problem, the vector, linear (sum), linear (max), and linear (max-min) data normalization techniques were identified to evaluate aircraft selection problem. As a logical implication of the proposed approach, it enhances the decision making process through enabling the decision maker to: (i) use higher level knowledge regarding the selection of criteria weights and the proposed technique, (ii) estimate the ranking of an alternative, under different data normalization techniques and integrated criteria weights after a posteriori analysis of the final rankings of alternatives. A set of commercial passenger aircraft were considered in order to illustrate the proposed approach. The obtained results of the proposed approach were compared using Spearman's rho tests. An analysis of the final rank stability with respect to the changes in criteria weights was also performed so as to assess the sensitivity of the alternative rankings obtained by the application of different data normalization techniques and the proposed approach.

Keywords: Normalization Techniques, Aircraft Selection, Multiple Criteria Decision Making, Multiple Criteria Decision Making Analysis, MCDMA

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Authors: Alexandru Epureanu, Virgil Teodor

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One of the main research directions in CAD/CAM machining area is the reducing of machining time. The feedrate scheduling is one of the advanced techniques that allows keeping constant the uncut chip area and as sequel to keep constant the main cutting force. They are two main ways for feedrate optimization. The first consists in the cutting force monitoring, which presumes to use complex equipment for the force measurement and after this, to set the feedrate regarding the cutting force variation. The second way is to optimize the feedrate by keeping constant the material removal rate regarding the cutting conditions. In this paper there is proposed a new approach using an extended database that replaces the system model. The feedrate scheduling is determined based on the identification of the reconfigurable machine tool, and the feed value determination regarding the uncut chip section area, the contact length between tool and blank and also regarding the geometrical roughness. The first stage consists in the blank and tool monitoring for the determination of actual profiles. The next stage is the determination of programmed tool path that allows obtaining the piece target profile. The graphic representation environment models the tool and blank regions and, after this, the tool model is positioned regarding the blank model according to the programmed tool path. For each of these positions the geometrical roughness value, the uncut chip area and the contact length between tool and blank are calculated. Each of these parameters are compared with the admissible values and according to the result the feed value is established. We can consider that this approach has the following advantages: in case of complex cutting processes the prediction of cutting force is possible; there is considered the real cutting profile which has deviations from the theoretical profile; the blank-tool contact length limitation is possible; it is possible to correct the programmed tool path so that the target profile can be obtained. Applying this method, there are obtained data sets which allow the feedrate scheduling so that the uncut chip area is constant and, as a result, the cutting force is constant, which allows to use more efficiently the machine tool and to obtain the reduction of machining time.

Keywords: Reconfigurable machine tool, system identification, uncut chip area, cutting conditions scheduling.

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Authors: Zainab Algharibi, Julie McAdam, Catherine Fagan

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The purpose of this paper is to shed light on how Omani children in the first grade experience their needs during their transition to primary school. Theoretically, the paper was built on two perspectives: Dewey's concept of continuity of experience and the boundary objects introduced by Vygotsky (CHAT). The methodology of the study is based on the crucial role of children’s agency which is a very important activity as an educational tool to enhance the child’s participation in the learning process and develop their ability to face various issues in their life. Thus, the data were obtained from 45 children in grade one from four different primary schools using drawing and visual narrative activities, in addition to researcher observations during the start of the first weeks of the academic year for the first grade. As the study dealt with children, all of the necessary ethical laws were followed. This paper is considered original since it seeks to deal with the issue of children's transition from kindergarten to primary school not only in Oman, but in the Arab region. Therefore, it is expected to fill an important gap in this field and present a proposal that will be a door for researchers to enter this research field later. The analysis of drawing and visual narrative was performed according to the social semiotics approach in two phases. The first is to read out the surface message “denotation,” while the second is to go in-depth via the symbolism obtained from children while they talked and drew letters and signs. This stage is known as “signified”; a video was recorded of each child talking about their drawing and expressing themself. Then, the data were organised and classified according to a cross-data network. Regarding the researcher observation analyses, the collected data were analysed according to the "grounded theory". It is based on comparing the recent data collected from observations with data previously encoded by other methods in which children were drawing alongside the visual narrative in the current study, in order to identify the similarities and differences, and also to clarify the meaning of the accessed categories and to identify sub-categories of them with a description of possible links between them. This is a kind of triangulation in data collection. The study came up with a set of findings, the most vital being that the children's greatest interest goes to their social and psychological needs, such as friends, their teacher, and playing. Also, their biggest fears are a new place, a new teacher, and not having friends, while they showed less concern for their need for educational knowledge and skills.

Keywords: Children’s academic needs, children’s social needs, children transition, primary school.

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Authors: Mustafa M. Donma, Orkide Donma

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Obesity is a disease with an ever-increasing prevalence throughout the world. The metabolic network associated with obesity is very complicated. In metabolic syndrome (MetS), it becomes even more difficult to understand. Within this context, hormones, cytokines, and many others participate in this complex matrix. The collaboration among all of these parameters is a matter of great wonder. Cortisol, as a stress hormone, is closely associated with obesity. Thyroid hormones are involved in the regulation of energy as well as glucose metabolism with all of its associates. Fetuin A has been known for years; however, the involvement of this parameter in obesity discussions is rather new. Recently, it has been defined as one of the new generation markers of obesity. In this study, the aim was to introduce complex interactions among all to be able to make clear comparisons, at least for a part of this complicated matter. Morbid obese (MO) children participated in the study. Two groups with 46 MO children and 43 with MetS were constituted. All children included in the study were above 99th age- and sex-adjusted body mass index (BMI) percentiles according to World Health Organization criteria. Forty-three morbid obese children in the second group also had MetS components. Informed consent forms were filled by the parents of the participants. The institutional ethics committee has given approval for the study protocol. Data as well as the findings of the study were evaluated from a statistical point of view. Two groups were matched for their age and gender compositions. Significantly higher body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, thyrotropin, and insulin values were observed in the MetS group. Triiodothyronine concentrations did not differ between the groups. Elevated levels for thyroxin, cortisol, and fetuin-A were detected in the MetS group compared to the first group (p > 0.05). In MO MetS- group, cortisol was correlated with thyroxin and fetuin-A (p < 0.05). In the MO MetS+ group, none of these correlations were present. Instead, a correlation between cortisol and thyrotropin was found (p < 0.05). In conclusion, findings have shown that cortisol was the key player in severely obese children. The association of this hormone with the participants of thyroid hormone metabolism was quite important. The lack of association with fetuin A in the morbid obese MetS+ group has suggested the possible interference of MetS components in the behavior of this new generation obesity marker. The most remarkable finding of the study was the unique correlation between cortisol and thyrotropin in the morbid obese MetS+ group, suggesting that thyrotropin may serve as a target along with cortisol in the morbid obese MetS+ group. This association may deserve specific attention during the development of remedies against MetS in the pediatric population.

Keywords: children, cortisol, fetuin A, morbid obesity, thyrotropin

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Authors: Jožef Ritonja, Bojan Grčar, Boštjan Polajžer

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In recent years, electricity trade between neighboring countries has become increasingly intense. Increasing power transmission over long distances has resulted in an increase in the oscillations of the transmitted power. The damping of the oscillations can be carried out with the reconfiguration of the network or the replacement of generators, but such solution is not economically reasonable. The only cost-effective solution to improve the damping of power oscillations is to use power system stabilizers. Power system stabilizer represents a part of synchronous generator control system. It utilizes semiconductor’s excitation system connected to the rotor field excitation winding to increase the damping of the power system. The majority of the synchronous generators are equipped with the conventional power system stabilizers with fixed parameters. The control structure of the conventional power system stabilizers and the tuning procedure are based on the linear control theory. Conventional power system stabilizers are simple to realize, but they show non-sufficient damping improvement in the entire operating conditions. This is the reason that advanced control theories are used for development of better power system stabilizers. In this paper, the adaptive control theory for power system stabilizers design and synthesis is studied. The presented work is focused on the use of model reference adaptive control approach. Control signal, which assures that the controlled plant output will follow the reference model output, is generated by the adaptive algorithm. Adaptive gains are obtained as a combination of the "proportional" term and with the σ-term extended "integral" term. The σ-term is introduced to avoid divergence of the integral gains. The necessary condition for asymptotic tracking is derived by means of hyperstability theory. The benefits of the proposed model reference adaptive power system stabilizer were evaluated as objectively as possible by means of a theoretical analysis, numerical simulations and laboratory realizations. Damping of the synchronous generator oscillations in the entire operating range was investigated. Obtained results show the improved damping in the entire operating area and the increase of the power system stability. The results of the presented work will help by the development of the model reference power system stabilizer which should be able to replace the conventional stabilizers in power systems.

Keywords: Power system, stability, oscillations, power system stabilizer, model reference adaptive control.

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Authors: Qurbanov Huseyn Nuraddin

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Reliable food supply of the population of a country is one of the main directions of the state's economic policy. Grain growing, which is the basis of agriculture, is important in this area. In the cultivation of cereals on slopes, the application of equal amounts of mineral fertilizers to under the soil before sowing is a very important technological process. The low level of technical equipment in this area prevents producers from providing the country with the necessary quality cereals. Experience in the operation of modern technical means has shown that at present, there is a need to provide an equal amount of fertilizer to under the soil on slopes, fully meeting the agro-technical requirements. No fundamental changes have been made to the industrial machines that fertilize under the soil, and unequal application of fertilizers to under the soil on slopes has been applied. This technological process leads to the destruction of new seedlings and reduced productivity due to intolerance to frost during the winter for the plant planted in the fall. In special climatic conditions, there is an optimal fertilization rate for each agricultural product. The application of fertilizers to the soil is one of the conditions that increase their efficiency in the field. As can be seen, the development of a new technical proposal for fertilizing and plowing the slopes in equal amounts on the slopes, improving the technological and design parameters, taking into account the physical and mechanical properties of fertilizers, is very important. Taking into account the above-mentioned issues, a combined plough was developed in our laboratory. Combined plough carries out pre-sowing technological operation in the cultivation of cereals, providing a smooth equal amount of mineral fertilizers to under the soil on the slopes. Mathematical models of a smooth spreader that evenly distributes fertilizers in the field have been developed. Thus, diagrams and graphs obtained without distribution on the eight partitions of the smooth spreader are constructed under the inclined angles of the slopes. Percentage and productivity of equal distribution in the field were noted by practical and theoretical analysis.

Keywords: Combined plough, mineral fertilizer, equal sowing, fertilizer norm, grain-crops, sowing fertilizer.

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Authors: Glenda Wrenn, Juliet Muzere, Meldra Hall, Allyson Belton, Kisha Holden, Chanita Hughes-Halbert, Martha Kent, Bekh Bradley

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Understanding the help seeking decision making process and experiences of health disparity populations with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is central to development of trauma-informed, culturally centered, and patient focused services. Yet, little is known about the decision making process among adult Black women who are non-treatment seekers as they are, by definition, not engaged in services. Methods: Audiotaped interviews were conducted with 30 African American adult women with clinically significant PTSD symptoms who were engaged in primary care, but not in treatment for PTSD despite symptom burden. A qualitative interview guide was used to elucidate key themes. Independent coding of themes mapped to theory and identification of emergent themes were conducted using qualitative methods. An existing quantitative dataset was analyzed to contextualize responses and provide a descriptive summary of the sample. Results: Emergent themes revealed that active mental avoidance, the intermittent nature of distress, ambivalence, and self-identified resilience as undermining to help seeking decisions. Participants were stuck within the help-seeking phase of ‘recognition’ of illness and retained a sense of “it is my decision” despite endorsing significant social and environmental negative influencers. Participants distinguished ‘help acceptance’ from ‘help seeking’ with greater willingness to accept help and importance placed on being of help to others. Conclusions: Elucidation of the decision-making process from the perspective of non-treatment seekers has implications for outreach and treatment within models of integrated and specialty systems care. The salience of responses to trauma symptoms and stagnation in the help seeking recognition phase are findings relevant to integrated care service design and community engagement.

Keywords: Culture, help-seeking, integrated care, PTSD.

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Authors: Paola Lecca, Lorenzo Dematte

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Reactiondiffusion systems are mathematical models that describe how the concentration of one or more substances distributed in space changes under the influence of local chemical reactions in which the substances are converted into each other, and diffusion which causes the substances to spread out in space. The classical representation of a reaction-diffusion system is given by semi-linear parabolic partial differential equations, whose general form is ÔêétX(x, t) = DΔX(x, t), where X(x, t) is the state vector, D is the matrix of the diffusion coefficients and Δ is the Laplace operator. If the solute move in an homogeneous system in thermal equilibrium, the diffusion coefficients are constants that do not depend on the local concentration of solvent and of solutes and on local temperature of the medium. In this paper a new stochastic reaction-diffusion model in which the diffusion coefficients are function of the local concentration, viscosity and frictional forces of solvent and solute is presented. Such a model provides a more realistic description of the molecular kinetics in non-homogenoeus and highly structured media as the intra- and inter-cellular spaces. The movement of a molecule A from a region i to a region j of the space is described as a first order reaction Ai k- → Aj , where the rate constant k depends on the diffusion coefficient. Representing the diffusional motion as a chemical reaction allows to assimilate a reaction-diffusion system to a pure reaction system and to simulate it with Gillespie-inspired stochastic simulation algorithms. The stochastic time evolution of the system is given by the occurrence of diffusion events and chemical reaction events. At each time step an event (reaction or diffusion) is selected from a probability distribution of waiting times determined by the specific speed of reaction and diffusion events. Redi is the software tool, developed to implement the model of reaction-diffusion kinetics and dynamics. It is a free software, that can be downloaded from http://www.cosbi.eu. To demonstrate the validity of the new reaction-diffusion model, the simulation results of the chaperone-assisted protein folding in cytoplasm obtained with Redi are reported. This case study is redrawing the attention of the scientific community due to current interests on protein aggregation as a potential cause for neurodegenerative diseases.

Keywords: Reaction-diffusion systems, Fick's law, stochastic simulation algorithm.

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Authors: Ana Pauna

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The Expert Witness Testimony in the Battered Woman Syndrome Expert witness testimony (EWT) is a kind of information given by an expert specialized in the field (here in BWS) to the jury in order to help the court better understand the case. EWT does not always work in favor of the battered women. Two main decision-making models are discussed in the paper: the Mathematical model and the Explanation model. In the first model, the jurors calculate ″the importance and strength of each piece of evidence″ whereas in the second model they try to integrate the EWT with the evidence and create a coherent story that would describe the crime. The jury often misunderstands and misjudges battered women for their action (or in this case inaction). They assume that these women are masochists and accept being mistreated for if a man abuses a woman constantly, she should and could divorce him or simply leave at any time. The research in the domain found that indeed, expert witness testimony has a powerful influence on juror’s decisions thus its quality needs to be further explored. One of the important factors that need further studies is a bias called the dispositionist worldview (a belief that what happens to people is of their own doing). This kind of attributional bias represents a tendency to think that a person’s behavior is due to his or her disposition, even when the behavior is clearly attributed to the situation. Hypothesis The hypothesis of this paper is that if a juror has a dispositionist worldview then he or she will blame the rape victim for triggering the assault. The juror would therefore commit the fundamental attribution error and believe that the victim’s disposition caused the rape and not the situation she was in. Methods The subjects in the study were 500 randomly sampled undergraduate students from McGill, Concordia, Université de Montréal and UQAM. Dispositional Worldview was scored on the Dispositionist Worldview Questionnaire. After reading the Rape Scenarios, each student was asked to play the role of a juror and answer a questionnaire consisting of 7 questions about the responsibility, causality and fault of the victim. Results The results confirm the hypothesis which states that if a juror has a dispositionist worldview then he or she will blame the rape victim for triggering the assault. By doing so, the juror commits the fundamental attribution error because he will believe that the victim’s disposition, and not the constraints or opportunities of the situation, caused the rape scenario.

Keywords: bias, expert/witness testimony, attribution error, jury, rape myth

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Authors: S. Apprich, F. Wulle, A. Lechler, A. Pott, A. Verl

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Large-scale machine tools for the manufacturing of large work pieces, e.g. blades, casings or gears for wind turbines, feature pose-dependent dynamic behavior. Small structural damping coefficients lead to long decay times for structural vibrations that have negative impacts on the production process. Typically, these vibrations are handled by increasing the stiffness of the structure by adding mass. This is counterproductive to the needs of sustainable manufacturing as it leads to higher resource consumption both in material and in energy. Recent research activities have led to higher resource efficiency by radical mass reduction that is based on controlintegrated active vibration avoidance and damping methods. These control methods depend on information describing the dynamic behavior of the controlled machine tools in order to tune the avoidance or reduction method parameters according to the current state of the machine. This paper presents the appearance, consequences and challenges of the pose-dependent dynamic behavior of lightweight large-scale machine tool structures in production. It starts with the theoretical introduction of the challenges of lightweight machine tool structures resulting from reduced stiffness. The statement of the pose-dependent dynamic behavior is corroborated by the results of the experimental modal analysis of a lightweight test structure. Afterwards, the consequences of the pose-dependent dynamic behavior of lightweight machine tool structures for the use of active control and vibration reduction methods are explained. Based on the state of the art of pose-dependent dynamic machine tool models and the modal investigation of an FE-model of the lightweight test structure, the criteria for a pose-dependent model for use in vibration reduction are derived. The description of the approach for a general posedependent model of the dynamic behavior of large lightweight machine tools that provides the necessary input to the aforementioned vibration avoidance and reduction methods to properly tackle machine vibrations is the outlook of the paper.

Keywords: Dynamic behavior, lightweight, machine tool, pose-dependency.

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Authors: Rajan Rajabalaya, Li-Qun Tor, Sheba David

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Transdermal delivery of ondansetron hydrochloride (OdHCl) can prevent the problems encountered with oral ondansetron. In previously conducted studies, effect of amount of polyvinyl pyrrolidone, permeation enhancer and casting solvent on the physicochemical properties on OdHCl were investigated. It is feasible to develop ondansetron transdermal patch by using ethyl cellulose and polyvinyl pyrrolidone with dibutyl pthalate as plasticizer, however, the desired flux is not achieved. The primary aim of this study is to use dimethyl succinate (DMS) and propylene glycol that are not incorporated in previous studies to determine their effect on the physicochemical properties of an OdHCl transdermal patch using ethyl cellulose and polyvinyl pyrrolidone. This study also investigates the effect of permeation enhancer (eugenol and phosphatidylcholine) on the release of OdHCl. The results showed that propylene glycol is a more suitable plasticizer compared to DMS in the fabrication of OdHCl transdermal patch using ethyl cellulose and polyvinyl pyrrolidone as polymers. Propylene glycol containing patch has optimum drug content, thickness, moisture content and water absorption, tensile strength, and a better release profile than DMS. Eugenol and phosphatidylcholine can increase release of OdHCl from the patches. From the physicochemical result and permeation profile, a combination of 350mg of ethyl cellulose, 150mg polyvinyl pyrrolidone, 3% of total polymer weight of eugenol, and 40% of total polymer weight of propylene glycol is the most suitable formulation to develop an OdHCl patch. OdHCl release did not increase with increasing the percentage of plasticiser. DMS 4, PG 4, DMS 9, PG 9, DMS 14, and PG 14 gave better release profiles where using 300mg: 0mg, 300mg: 100mg, and 350mg: 150mg of EC: PVP. Thus, 40% of PG or DMS appeared to be the optimum amount of plasticiser when the above combination where EC: PVP was used. It was concluded from the study that a patch formulation containing 350mg EC, 150mg PVP, 40% PG and 3% eugenol is the best transdermal matrix patch compositions for the uniform and continuous release/permeation of OdHCl over an extended period. This patch design can be used for further pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic studies in suitable animal models.

Keywords: Ondansetron hydrochloride, dimethyl succinate, eugenol.

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