Search

This paper develops – and applies – a micro-macroeconomic modeling approach for assessing major welfare system reforms. With a growing interest in the value of bold welfare reforms in the light of persistent and widening inequalities, we demonstrate the value of a comprehensive analysis of both the (micro) impact upon the distribution of household incomes and wider (macro) impacts upon national income, unemployment and government spending. By combining microsimulation with CGE modeling, we argue that our findings demonstrate the importance of any major social welfare or broad fiscal reform being the subject of a micro-macro modeling approach. We illustrate this through an application to the introduction of a universal basic income in Scotland.

A computationally efficient FIR-filtering based tool-path (trajectory) modification method, which simultaneously realizes remarkable trajectory error reduction, vibration avoidance, and short machining time, is presented in this paper. Conventional trajectory generation in NC units causes trajectory error by using smoothing filters for limiting acceleration and avoiding vibration of the machines, and this trajectory error is often too large for practical applications. Therefore, a novel trajectory generation method is presented in this paper to remarkably reduce the trajectory error by modifying the trajectory commanded by G-codes on the basis of the trajectory error and angular speed. In order to realize the trajectory modification method, three key components, (i) p-corresponding method, (ii) -smoothing filter, and (iii) modification gain function, are developed in this study. The p-corresponding method is required to stably evaluate the trajectory error, while the other two components are used to compute appropriate modification gains for arbitrary trajectories. The proposed trajectory modification method is completed by integrating the components (i) to (iii), and it is verified utilizing a commercial machine tool. It is confirmed that average trajectory error is reduced remarkably by the proposed method without increasing machining time or sacrificing vibration avoidance by the smoothing filter. In particular, the trajectory errors at circular arcs are eliminated almost completely, e.g., the average trajectory error is reduced significantly by about 80% for a trajectory consisting of several circular arcs and corners.

This paper presents a shape optimisation system to design the shape of an acoustically-hard object in the three-dimensional open space. The boundary element method (BEM) is suitable to analyse such an exterior field. However, the conventional BEM, which is based on piecewise polynomial shape and approximate (interpolation) functions, can require many design variables because they are usually chosen as a part of the nodes of the underlying boundary element mesh. In addition, it is not easy for the conventional method to compute the gradient of the sound pressure on the surface, which is necessary to compute the shape derivative of our interest, of a given object. To overcome these issues, we employ the isogeometric boundary element method (IGBEM), which was developed in our previous work. With using the IGBEM, we can design the shape of surfaces through control points of the NURBS surfaces of the target object. We integrate the IGBEM with the nonlinear programming software through the adjoint variable method (AVM), where the resulting adjoint boundary value problem can be also solved by the IGBEM with a slight modification. The numerical verification and demonstration validate our shape optimisation framework.

With the availability of improved digital elevation models (DEMs) of global coverage, the morphological analysis of large populations of glacial cirques is possible, and can be used to derive important paleo-climate and environmental information related to the distribution and history of former glaciers. In 2017, an ArcGIS toolbox, ACME (Automated Cirque Metrics Extraction), was developed to derive 16 cirque metrics based on input cirque outlines, threshold midpoints, and DEMs. ACME has been widely used in cirque morphological analysis and regional comparisons. This paper presents a revised and extended toolbox, ACME2. This extended toolbox includes new functions to automatically derive cirque threshold midpoints (cirque foci) and 49 morphometric and locational variables, with attributes related to cirque location, size, shape, altitude, slope, and aspect, including variables related to the median axis, as well as 3 input metadata attributes. ACME2 also improves the methods for calculation of the hypsometric maximum and integral, and implements a new method for plan closure to be more consistent with the original definition. All ACME2 tools are coded in Python and can be imported into ArcGIS with user-friendly interfaces. Comparisons for 155 cirques in the English Lake District and 51 in the Shulaps Range, British Columbia, indicate consistency between the ACME2-derived and manually derived metrics, with most correlations r > 0.90: none <0.70. ACME2 provides more cirque metrics and automates the whole calculation sequence with cirque outlines and DEMs. Its comprehensive approach facilitates understanding of cirque form and development in all its variety.

A novel fault diagnosis procedure is proposed in this paper to estimate faults using a linear parameter varying (LPV) model whose scheduling parameters depend on the fault. A wrong determination of the operating conditions could lead the system to an undesired performance or even to an unstable situation, when classical fault diagnosis approaches are applied. This paper addresses this issue by formulating fault diagnosis as a dynamic optimization problem, solved by using a novel hybrid technique that combines a Luenberger-based observer with artificial intelligent (AI) optimization-based algorithms. The observer supervises the health of the system, while AI-based algorithms are able to reconstruct the faulty signal in real-time when the observer determines that the system is under a fault. The efficiency of the proposed fault diagnosis scheme, the three AI-based algorithms based on artificial bee colony and particle swarm optimization, and the gradient-based algorithm developed in this paper, are assessed using a numerical example., This work has been co-financed by the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERFD) through the project SaCoAV (ref. MINECO PID2020-114244RB-100), by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union in the framework of the ERDF Operational Program of Catalonia 2014-2020 (ref. 001-P-001643 Looming Factory) and by the DGR of Generalitat de Catalunya (SAC group ref. 2017/SGR/482)., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (author's final draft)

This paper proposes an isogeometric boundary element method (IGBEM) to solve the electromagnetic scattering problems for three-dimensional doubly-periodic multi-layered structures. The main concerns are the constructions of (i) an open surface (between two layers) and (ii) a vector basis function with using the B-spline functions. Regarding (i), we considered an algorithm to generate a doubly-periodic open surface with the tensor product of the B-spline functions of any degree. Regarding (ii), we employed the vector basis function based on the B-spline functions, which was proposed by Buffa et al. (2010), and adapted it to the underlying periodic problems so that it can satisfy the quasi-periodic condition on the boundary of an open surface. The proposed IGBEM worked for solving some numerical examples satisfactorily and proved the applicability to plasmonic simulations.

This paper proposes an isogeometric boundary element method (IGBEM) to solve the electromagnetic scattering problems for three-dimensional doubly-periodic multi-layered structures. The main concerns are the constructions of (i) an open surface (between two layers) and (ii) a vector basis function with using the B-spline functions. Regarding (i), we considered an algorithm to generate a doubly-periodic open surface with the tensor product of the B-spline functions of any degree. Regarding (ii), we employed the vector basis function based on the B-spline functions, which was proposed by Buffa et al. (2010), and adapted it to the underlying periodic problems so that it can satisfy the quasi-periodic condition on the boundary of an open surface. The proposed IGBEM worked for solving some numerical examples satisfactorily and proved the applicability to plasmonic simulations.

In this paper, we study, from both an analytical and a numerical point of view, a poro-thermoelastic problem with microtemperatures. The so-called Moore–Gibson–Thompson equation is used to model the contribution for the temperature and microtemperatures. An existence and uniqueness result is proved by using the theory of linear semigroups of contractions and, for the one-dimensional case, the exponential energy decay is found under some conditions on the constitutive coefficients. Then, a fully discrete approximation is introduced by using the finite element method and the implicit Euler scheme. We show that the discrete energy decays and we obtain some a priori error estimates from which, under some adequate additional regularity conditions on the continuous solution, we derive the linear convergence of the approximations. Finally, we perform some numerical simulations to demonstrate the accuracy of the approximations and the behavior of the discrete energy and the solution, Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)

The recent literature on event-triggered control has demonstrated the potential of dynamic periodic event-triggered control. Compared to continuous-time event-triggering rules, the benefit of considering periodic event-triggered control is to avoid the Zeno phenomenon, which refers to the situation when there are an infinite number of updates in a bounded interval of time. The idea of periodic event-triggered control is to trigger the control law only at known allowable periodic sampling instants. In this paper, our objective is to relax the constraint on the periodicity of the allowable sampling instants and to adapt this framework to the dynamic event-triggered control, which has not been considered in the literature, as far as we are aware of. Following the successful efforts to assess the stability of aperiodic sampled-data control, here we propose a generic framework to emulate aperiodic dynamic event-triggered control law for linear systems, for which the allowable sampling instants are not necessarily equidistant. Such an analysis is made possible thanks to the looped-functionals framework, which gives the flexibility to consider the periodic/aperiodic static/dynamic event-triggered control in a single formulation. Finally, the efficiency of the proposed results is illustrated through the study of two academic examples.

Producción Científica, When applied to stiff problems, the effective order of convergence of general linear methods is governed by their stage order, which is less than or equal to the classical order of the method. This produces an order reduction phenomenon, present in all general linear methods except those with high stage order, in a manner similar to that observed in other time integrators with internal stages. In this paper, we investigate the order reduction which arises when general linear methods are used as time integrators when using the method of lines for solving numerically initial boundary value problems with time dependent boundary values. We propose a technique, based on making an appropriate choice of the boundary values for the internal stages, with which it is possible to recover one unit of order, as we prove in this work. As expected, this implies a considerable improvement for the general linear methods suffering order reduction. Moreover, numerical experiments show that the improvement is not only in these cases, but that, even when the order reduction is not expected, the size of the errors is drastically reduced by using the technique proposed in this paper., Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación y Ministerio de Universidades (project PGC2018-101443-B-100), Junta de Castilla y León (Grant numbers VA169P20 and VA193P20)

This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.

This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.

This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.

Forgetting is an important concept in knowledge representation and automated reasoning with widespread applications across a number of disciplines. A standard forgetting operator, characterized in [26] in terms of model-theoretic semantics and primarily focusing on the propositional case, opened up a new research subarea. In this paper, a new operator called weak forgetting, dual to standard forgetting, is introduced and both together are shown to offer a new more uniform perspective on forgetting operators in general. Both the weak and standard forgetting operators are characterized in terms of entailment and inference, rather than a model theoretic semantics. This naturally leads to a useful algorithmic perspective based on quantifier elimination and the use of Ackermanns Lemma and its fixpoint generalization. The strong formal relationship between standard forgetting and strongest necessary conditions and weak forgetting and weakest sufficient conditions is also characterized quite naturally through the entailment based, inferential perspective used. The framework used to characterize the dual forgetting operators is also generalized to the first-order case and includes useful algorithms for computing first-order forgetting operators in special cases. Practical examples are also included to show the importance of both weak and standard forgetting in modeling and representation., Funding Agencies|ELLIIT Network Organization for Information and Communication Technology, Sweden; Mahasarakham Development Fund, Mahasarakham University, Thailand; National Science Centre Poland [2017/27/B/ST6/02018]

Electronic health records (EHRs) contain diverse patient information, including medical notes, clinical events, and laboratory test results. Integrating this multimodal data can improve disease diagnoses using deep learning models. However, effectively combining different modalities for diagnosis remains challenging. Previous approaches, such as attention mechanisms and contrastive learning, have attempted to address this but do not fully integrate the modalities into a unified feature space. This paper presents EHR-KnowGen, a multimodal learning model enhanced with external domain knowledge, for improved disease diagnosis generation from diverse patient information in EHRs. Unlike previous approaches, our model integrates different modalities into a unified feature space with soft prompts learning and leverages large language models (LLMs) to generate disease diagnoses. By incorporating external domain knowledge from different levels of granularity, we enhance the extraction and fusion of multimodal information, resulting in more accurate diagnosis generation. Experimental results on real-world EHR datasets demonstrate the superiority of our generative model over comparative methods, providing explainable evidence to enhance the understanding of diagnosis results.

This paper proposes a simplified yet accurate enough thermal model of Voltage Source Converters (VSC), aimed at circumventing the high computational cost of existing models, which prevents their use in electromechanical simulations. The proposed model reduces to a simple first-order system for thermal dynamics plus two quadratic equations separately modeling the IGBT and diode power losses. In addition, a methodology is provided to derive the proposed VSC thermal model parameters from manufacturer data. The proposed model is tested for two types of devices, both in steady and transient states. The results show that the reduced-order thermal model produces accurate results at a low computational cost, making it especially suitable for the co-simulation of thermal and electrical dynamic phenomena.

Every microorganism represents a biothermodynamic system, characterized by an empirical formula and thermodynamic properties of biosynthesis. Gibbs energy of biosynthesis influences the multiplication rate of a microorganism. In case of a mixed culture (microbial consortia) biosynthesis processes of microbial species are competitive. This is why Gibbs energy of biosynthesis determines the growth in a mixed culture. This paper gives a mechanistic model that explains growth of microorganisms in mixed culture and ability to grow in microbial consortia. Detailed biosynthesis reactions were formulated for the first time for five microorganism species, which include metallic elements. Moreover, thermodynamic properties of live matter and biosynthesis were calculated for the first time for five microorganism species and macromolecules.

In the present paper, we develop a new in situ low-friction technology for diamond-like carbon coatings using surface discharge in ambient air. As a result, the friction coefficient dropped from 0.18 to 0.06 shortly after surface discharge. Surface profiles and Raman analysis revealed the effectiveness of surface discharge to provide a thick and soft transfer layer, providing the optimal low friction condition described by Halling. Finally, we clarified the optimum surface discharge design that low-energy surface discharge produced a thick transfer layer due to concentration of the produced debris, resulting in low friction.

Although numerous studies have investigated droplets in shear flows, the features of these droplets are incompletely understood. This paper reports our experimental visualization results of sessile droplets in fully developed turbulent shear flows and the onset of their movement. The visualization was performed from the side and bottom views. Furthermore, the droplet height is much smaller than the boundary-layer thickness, and the droplet motions are strongly affected by turbulent velocity fluctuation. The droplets were deformed toward the front and spread in a spanwise direction. The front and rear-side contact angles recover the balance position, that changes symmetrically over time and are not clearly related to sessile droplet oscillation. The droplet oscillation frequencies were well predicted by the model based on the resonant vibrations of the standing waves except for the lowest mode. Based on the critical air velocity and droplet height, the motion onset was adequately approximated by a simple empirical relation between the Weber and Reynolds numbers.

Although numerous studies have investigated droplets in shear flows, the features of these droplets are incompletely understood. This paper reports our experimental visualization results of sessile droplets in fully developed turbulent shear flows and the onset of their movement. The visualization was performed from the side and bottom views. Furthermore, the droplet height is much smaller than the boundary-layer thickness, and the droplet motions are strongly affected by turbulent velocity fluctuation. The droplets were deformed toward the front and spread in a spanwise direction. The front and rear-side contact angles recover the balance position, that changes symmetrically over time and are not clearly related to sessile droplet oscillation. The droplet oscillation frequencies were well predicted by the model based on the resonant vibrations of the standing waves except for the lowest mode. Based on the critical air velocity and droplet height, the motion onset was adequately approximated by a simple empirical relation between the Weber and Reynolds numbers.

This work is dedicated to the stability analysis of time-delay systems with a single constant delay using the Lyapunov-Krasovskii theorem. This approach has been widely used in the literature and numerous sufficient conditions of stability have been proposed and expressed as linear matrix inequalities (LMI). The main criticism of the method that is often pointed out is that these LMI conditions are only sufficient, and there is a lack of information regarding the reduction of the conservatism. Recently, scalable methods have been investigated using Bessel-Legendre inequality or orthogonal polynomial-based inequalities. The interest of these methods relies on their hierarchical structure with a guarantee of reduction of the level of conservatism. However, the convergence is still an open question that will be answered for the first time in this paper. The objective is to prove that the stability of a time-delay system implies the feasibility of these scalable LMI, at a sufficiently large order of the Legendre polynomials. Moreover, the proposed contribution is even able to provide an analytic estimation of this order, giving rise to a necessary and sufficient LMI for the stability of time-delay systems.

Producción Científica, This paper provides the Generalized Mattson Solomon polynomial for repeated-root polycyclic codes over local rings that gives an explicit decomposition of them in terms of idempotents. It also states some structural properties of repeated-root polycyclic codes over finite fields in terms of matrix product codes. Both approaches provide a description of the -dual code for a given polycyclic code., MCIN/AEI /10.13039/501100011033 - EU NextGenerationEU/ PRTR (Grant TED2021-130358B-I00), Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, Scientific Programme “Enhancing the Research Capacity in Mathematical Sciences (PIKOM)”, No. DO1-67/05.05.2022., TÜB˙ITAK within the scope of 2219 International Post Doctoral Research Fellowship Program with application number 1059B192101164

Producción Científica, This paper focuses on the problem of crude oil operations scheduling carried out in a system composed of a refinery and a marine terminal, considering uncertainty in the arrival date of the ships that supply the crudes. To tackle this problem, we develop a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model based on continuous-time representation. Furthermore, we extend the proposed model to include risk management by considering the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) measure as the objective function, and we analyze the solutions obtained for different risk levels. Finally, to evaluate the solution obtained, we calculate the Expected Value of Perfect Information (EVPI) and the Value of the Stochastic Solution (VSS) to assess whether two-stage stochastic programming model offers any advantage over simpler deterministic approaches., Gobierno de España - proyects a-CIDiT (PID2021-123654OB-C31) and InCo4In (PGC 2018-099312-B-C31), Junta de Castilla y León - EU-FEDER (CLU 2017-09, CL-EI-2021-07, UIC 233)

This paper reports an evaluation of firmness, soluble solids content (SSC), and acidity (pH) in kiwifruit using a newly designed visible–near-infrared (Vis–NIR) spatially resolved spectroscopic (SRS) system. The system mainly comprises a cost-effective Vis–NIR hyperspectral imaging camera, a halogen light source, and 36 light-receiving silica fibers which were divided into six groups (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 mm away from the light illumination) used to collect diffusely reflected light from sample surface. During the experiment, time-resolved spectroscopy (TRS) was used to validate the light scattering characteristics at a single wavelength of 846 nm by transmission measurement, which differed from the reflectance measurement of the SRS system. The TRS results show that firmer kiwifruits tended to have a lower transmitted light intensity and a higher full width at half maximum value. The SRS results indicate that the reflected light intensity decreased more with an increased distance from the illumination spot in firmer kiwifruits. The results of the two methods supported the same view, i.e., firmer kiwifruit indicated higher degrees of light scattering inside. Following on, the calibration models for kiwifruit properties were constructed using the SRS data coupled with partial least squares regression analysis. Finally, the prediction accuracies were benchmarked against standard diffuse reflectance spectroscopy using one fiber group position of the same SRS system. The overall results showed the benefits of using the SRS system to predict fruit firmness by enhancing light scattering effects and predicting the SSC required for reducing such effects.

This paper reports an evaluation of firmness, soluble solids content (SSC), and acidity (pH) in kiwifruit using a newly designed visible–near-infrared (Vis–NIR) spatially resolved spectroscopic (SRS) system. The system mainly comprises a cost-effective Vis–NIR hyperspectral imaging camera, a halogen light source, and 36 light-receiving silica fibers which were divided into six groups (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10 mm away from the light illumination) used to collect diffusely reflected light from sample surface. During the experiment, time-resolved spectroscopy (TRS) was used to validate the light scattering characteristics at a single wavelength of 846 nm by transmission measurement, which differed from the reflectance measurement of the SRS system. The TRS results show that firmer kiwifruits tended to have a lower transmitted light intensity and a higher full width at half maximum value. The SRS results indicate that the reflected light intensity decreased more with an increased distance from the illumination spot in firmer kiwifruits. The results of the two methods supported the same view, i.e., firmer kiwifruit indicated higher degrees of light scattering inside. Following on, the calibration models for kiwifruit properties were constructed using the SRS data coupled with partial least squares regression analysis. Finally, the prediction accuracies were benchmarked against standard diffuse reflectance spectroscopy using one fiber group position of the same SRS system. The overall results showed the benefits of using the SRS system to predict fruit firmness by enhancing light scattering effects and predicting the SSC required for reducing such effects.

Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) are a commercially important species that support a longline fishery at the subantarctic island of South Georgia (CCAMLR Subarea 48.3). Understanding the life history of Patagonian toothfish is key to the successful management and sustainability of this fishery. Using catch data from the past 25-years, 1997 to 2021, we provide an updated assessment of the spatial, temporal, and demographic variability of Patagonian toothfish spawning at South Georgia. Our findings confirm that spawning occurs in the vicinity of the shelf-break of South Georgia, with significant spawning hotspots detected at Shag Rocks, midway along both the northern and southern shelf breaks, and at the eastern end of the island. The location of these hotspots were consistent over the 25-years examined. Based on data between 1997 and 2007, when fishing occurred routinely all around the island and at Shag Rocks, 40% of detected hotspot locations overlapped with regions where Benthic Closed Areas (BCAs) were established in 2008. With this, we can estimate that approximately 40% of spawning hotspots are located within, and already protected by, the existing network of BCAs. There was evidence that the timing of toothfish spawning exhibited bimodality at South Georgia with a peak in April being observed in the first two years of the time series. This peak fell outside the seasonally restricted fishing season for many subsequent years. These findings are discussed in the context of both historic, current, and possible future regulatory changes to this longline fishery.

The advent of whole slide imaging has brought advanced computer-aided diagnosis via medical imaging and artificial intelligence technologies in digital pathology. The examination of tissue samples through whole slide imaging is commonly used to diagnose cancerous diseases, but the analysis of histopathology images through a decision support system is not always accurate due to variations in color caused by different scanning equipment, staining methods, and tissue reactivity. These variabilities decrease the accuracy of computer-aided diagnosis and affect the diagnosis of pathologists. In this context, an effective stain normalization method has proved as a powerful tool to standardize different color appearances and minimize color variations in histopathology images. This study reviews different stain normalization methods highlighting the main methodologies, contributions, advantages, and limitations of correlated works. The state-of-the-art methods are grouped into four distinct categories. Next, we select ten representative methods from the groups and conduct an experimental comparison to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of different methods and rank them according to selected performance accuracy measures. The quality performances of selected methods are compared in terms of quaternion structure similarity index metric, structural similarity index metric, and Pearson correlation coefficient conducting experiments on three histopathological image datasets. Our findings conclude that the structure-preserving unified transformation-based methods consistently outperform the state-of-the-art methods by improving robustness against variability and reproducibility. The comparative analysis we conducted in this paper will serve as the basis for future research, which will help to refine existing techniques and develop new approaches to address the complexities of stain normalization in complex histopathology images.

In this paper, we propose a new approach for including quay crane travel and setup times in the berth allocation and quay crane assignment problem. We first develop a new mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) for the problem without setups (BACASP), in which berthing positions and times are considered as continuous variables. Several groups of valid inequalities are also set forth. Then, for the BACASP with crane travel and setup times, which we denote as BACASP-S, we propose two MILPs: the first is based on the previous BACASP formulation and the second on routing formulations. Due to the complexity of the BACASP-S, we also propose a genetic algorithm and an exact approach which combines various MILPs with the genetic algorithm. All methods and valid inequalities are computationally tested over two different sets of randomly generated instances. According to the results, the models and algorithms can optimally solve, in less than one hour, BACASP-S instances of up to 40 vessels within a quay one kilometer long and a time horizon of one week. Additionally, extensive experiments were conducted on a new large set of instances to assess the effect of various BACASP-S input parameters on the computation effort required to solve the problem. Ceteris paribus, the computational effort required seems to increase with decreasing number of cranes, while vessel processing times and crane setup times seem not to affect it.

Digital tools, particularly specialised decision support systems (DSSs), can be utilized to assist in the complex process of brownfield redevelopment. Existing brownfield DSSs typically focus on site-specific, late-stage applications, and socioeconomic factors are often overlooked. In this paper, we present a novel DSS aimed at providing support for early-stage, city region-scale brownfield land use planning and redevelopment. The proposed DSS is a prototype WebGIS application that enables land use planners and other brownfield regeneration professionals to examine a region and a set of sites during the initial planning phase for brownfield redevelopment. The DSS includes three bespoke modules comprising: (1) Land Use Potential (residential, commercial, and public open space), (2) risks posed by contamination and geotechnical hazards, (3) data pertinent to brownfield economic viability assessments. We outline a use case for this DSS, developed through comprehensive user-requirements gathering, and subsequently describe the techniques employed to construct the DSS modules and user interface. Finally, we present the results of user testing, wherein case-study stakeholders assessed the DSS. The feedback obtained during user testing aided in the identification of areas for improvement with regard to the functionality, usability, and effectiveness of the DSS in supporting decision-makers. The feedback was utilized to implement iterative improvements to the DSS and to plan future developments for the prototype DSS.

The competitive diffusion game is a game-theoretic model of information spreading on a graph proposed by Alon etal. (2010). It models the diffusion process of information in social networks where several competitive companies want to spread their information, for example. The nature of this game strongly depends on the graph topology, and the relationship is studied from several aspects. In this paper, we investigate the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium of the two-player competitive diffusion game on chordal and its related graphs. We show that a pure Nash equilibrium always exists on split graphs, block graphs, and interval graphs, all of which are well-known subclasses of chordal graphs. On the other hand, we show that a pure Nash equilibrium does not always exist on (strongly) chordal graphs; the boundary of the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium is found.

The competitive diffusion game is a game-theoretic model of information spreading on a graph proposed by Alon etal. (2010). It models the diffusion process of information in social networks where several competitive companies want to spread their information, for example. The nature of this game strongly depends on the graph topology, and the relationship is studied from several aspects. In this paper, we investigate the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium of the two-player competitive diffusion game on chordal and its related graphs. We show that a pure Nash equilibrium always exists on split graphs, block graphs, and interval graphs, all of which are well-known subclasses of chordal graphs. On the other hand, we show that a pure Nash equilibrium does not always exist on (strongly) chordal graphs; the boundary of the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium is found.

In this paper, we transform an orthogonal inductive definition set, which is a set of productions for inductive predicates, into a confluent term rewrite system such that a quantifier-free sequent is valid w.r.t. the inductive definition set if and only if an equation representing the sequent is an inductive theorem of the term rewrite system. To this end, we first propose a transformation of an orthogonal inductive definition set into a confluent term rewrite system that is equivalent to the inductive definition set in the sense of evaluating ground formulas. Then, we show that termination of the inductive definition set is proved by the generalized subterm criterion if and only if termination of the transformed term rewrite system is so. Finally, we show that the transformed term rewrite system with some rewrite rules for sequents has the expected property. In addition, we show a termination criterion for the union of term rewrite systems whose termination is proved by the generalized subterm criterion.

In this paper, we transform an orthogonal inductive definition set, which is a set of productions for inductive predicates, into a confluent term rewrite system such that a quantifier-free sequent is valid w.r.t. the inductive definition set if and only if an equation representing the sequent is an inductive theorem of the term rewrite system. To this end, we first propose a transformation of an orthogonal inductive definition set into a confluent term rewrite system that is equivalent to the inductive definition set in the sense of evaluating ground formulas. Then, we show that termination of the inductive definition set is proved by the generalized subterm criterion if and only if termination of the transformed term rewrite system is so. Finally, we show that the transformed term rewrite system with some rewrite rules for sequents has the expected property. In addition, we show a termination criterion for the union of term rewrite systems whose termination is proved by the generalized subterm criterion.

PR, IFPRI3; ISI; Feed the Future Initiative; 1 Fostering Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Food Supply; 2 Promoting Healthy Diets and Nutrition for all; 3 Building Inclusive and Efficient Markets, Trade Systems, and Food Industry; IFPRIOA, Markets, Trade, and Institutions (MTI); Food and Nutrition Policy, This paper examines the continuing effects of COVID-19 and exposure to weather extremes on income, dietary, and migration outcomes in the rural area of Guatemala. We rely on a comprehensive longitudinal survey of 1,612 smallholder farmers collected over three survey rounds in 2019, 2020, and 2021. We find improvements in incomes, food security, dietary diversity, and animal source foods (ASF) consumption in 2021 relative to 2020, but with levels still below pre-pandemic ones in 2019. We also find a substantial increase in the intention to emigrate that was not observed in the onset of the pandemic. In terms of the channels mediating the variations in dietary diversity and migration intentions, income shocks seem to have played a role, in contrast to direct exposure to the virus, local mobility restrictions, and food market disruptions. Importantly, households exposed to ETA and IOTA tropical storms, in addition to COVID-19, were considerably more prone to exhibit larger increases in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecure episodes and larger decreases in their diet quality and ASF consumption. The study provides novel evidence on vulnerable households’ wellbeing in the aftermath of a global crisis, including the effects of compound shocks.

Log Size Indexes (LSI) allow the increase of the number of data and have been used in a number of zooarchaeological studies since 1950. However, some standards to calculate the log ratios remain unpublished, the calculation of the indexes can be tedious, and it is further hindered by the diversity of data recording practices. The R package ‘zoolog’ enables calculation of thousands of log-ratios in seconds, with the advantage that the users can choose between different public references, which increases the repeatability and comparability of the results, allowing the smooth integration of references and databases with heterogeneous nomenclatures. Alternatively, the users may use their own references. This paper presents the main functionalities and procedures enabled by the package ‘zoolog’, together with some examples of use. A real dataset and several examples with R code are provided with the aim of facilitating osteometrical analyses in zooarchaeology.

This paper explores the influence of political leaders’ populist communication styles on public adherence to government policies regarding COVID-19 containment. We adopt a mixed-methods approach that combines: theory building with a nested multicase study design for Study 1 and an empirical study in a natural setting for Study 2. Based on the results from Studies 1 and 2, we develop two propositions that we further explain theoretically: (P1) countries with political leaders associated with engaging or intimate populist communication styles (i.e., the UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and Ireland) exhibit better public adherence to their governments’ COVID-19 movement restrictions than do countries with political leaders associated with communication styles that combine the champion of the people and engaging styles (i.e., the US); (P2) the country whose political leader is associated with a combination of engaging and intimate populist communication styles (i.e., Singapore) exhibits better public adherence to the government’s COVID-19 movement restrictions than do countries whose political leaders adopted solely engaging or solely intimate styles, namely, the UK, Canada, Australia, and Ireland. This paper contributes to the research on political leadership in crises and populist political communication.

This paper proposes a new vibration cutting method named “multimode vibration cutting” for precision surface texturing. The proposed cutting method utilizes multiple unidirectional vibration modes mainly in the depth-of-cut direction. The vibrations at multiple frequencies induced to the tool tip can generate not only sinusoidal but also highly-flexible trajectories such as trapezoidal, triangular, and distorted triangular waves. Notably, only a sinusoidal vibration can be induced when a single resonant vibration is applied to the tool tip. Compared to conventional highly-flexible cutting methods for surface texturing, such as the utilization of fast tool servo and amplitude control of ultrasonic elliptical vibration cutting, the proposed method is highly-efficient because of its direct usage of high resonant frequencies. Compared to conventional highly-efficient cutting methods for surface texturing, such as linear and elliptical vibration cutting which mainly utilizes the vibration component in the depth-of-cut direction, the proposed method can generate highly-flexible trajectories for various micro texture profiles. In this study, an ultrasonic multimode vibration device is developed, and the mechanics of generating multimode vibrations are demonstrated. Turning experiments with several texture profiles are performed to confirm the validity of the proposed method for highly-efficient and highly-flexible micro/nano surface texturing.

Scenarios are a powerful way in which the scientific community can inform future policies for transformative change. Forthcoming scenario work holds promise for the Nature Futures Framework, which through the concept of relational values, seeks to recognize a multiplicity of value positions on human-environment relations, including those of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs). The objective of this Perspective paper is to propose a novel scenario skeleton titled “Rights for Life”, which holds promise to achieve ambitious biodiversity targets in a socially-equitable ways by focusing on the Nature’s and IPLCs’ rights. We demonstrate, through the case of Arctic reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) herding, that the “Rights for Life” scenario seems to deliver better social equity outcomes than the recently proposed “Half Earth” and “Sharing the Planet” scenarios that have been designed to achieve ambitious conservation and biodiversity targets. The “Rights for Life” scenario is particularly fit for sparsely-populated indigenous homelands and rural regions where local communities depend on culturally important nature-based livelihoods for their well-being. We recommend that future scenarios targeting human-environment relations should not only consider non-western and relational value perspectives, but also recognize the importance of Nature’s and IPLCs’ rights for ensuring transformative change for equity and the environment. Clear recognition of such rights can function as a basis for new regulations, market-based governance instruments, policies, and participatory governance instruments ensuring that violation of Nature’s and IPLCs’ rights by societal developments is recognized, avoided, minimized, or at least compensated for.

Smartphone use has become an indispensable aspect of daily life for billions of people. Increasingly, researchers are examining the impact of smartphone use upon psychological well-being. However, little research has investigated how people deliberately use their smartphones to shape affective states; in other words, how smartphones are used as tools to support everyday emotion regulation. In this paper, we report a study that uses quantitative (experience sampling) and qualitative (semi-structured interview) methods to examine when and how people use smartphones to regulate emotions in everyday life, and the associated psychological consequences. Participants report spending a significant amount of time using their smartphones for emotion regulation, in particular to cope with unpleasant feelings such as boredom and stress. They report that smartphone-mediated emotion regulation is effective for attaining desired affective states. However, the perceived emotional benefits of smartphone emotion regulation do not emerge in lagged analyses predicting changes in momentary mood across a few hours, suggesting that emotional benefits may be transient or may reflect self-report biases. Participants discuss their perceptions of smartphone-supported emotion regulation in relation to smartphone addiction. This study provides evidence on how people use their smartphones for emotion regulation, and contributes to better understanding the complex relationship between smartphone use and emotional wellbeing.

This paper investigates the optimal design of 3D printed energy harvesters for railway bridges. The type of harvester studied is a cantilever bimorph beam with a mass at the tip and a load resistance. These parameters are adjusted to find the optimal design that tunes the harvester to the fundamental frequency of the bridge. An analytical model based on a variational formulation to represent the electromechanical behaviour of the device is presented. The optimisation problem is solved using a genetic algorithm with constraints of geometry and structural integrity. The proposed procedure is implemented in the design and manufacture of an energy harvesting device for a railway bridge on an in-service high-speed line. To do so, first the methodology is validated experimentally under laboratory conditions and shown to offer strong performance. Next the in-situ railway bridge is instrumented using accelerometers and the results used to evaluate energy harvesting performance. The results show the energy harvested in a time window of three and a half hours (20 train passages) is E=109.32 mJ . The proposed methodology is particularly useful for bridges with fundamental mode shapes above 4.5 Hz, however optimal design curves are also presented for the most common railway bridges found in practice. A novelty of this work is the use of additive manufacturing to 3D print energy harvesters, thus maximising design flexibility and energy performance.

This paper investigates the optimal design of 3D printed energy harvesters for railway bridges. The type of harvester studied is a cantilever bimorph beam with a mass at the tip and a load resistance. These parameters are adjusted to find the optimal design that tunes the harvester to the fundamental frequency of the bridge. An analytical model based on a variational formulation to represent the electromechanical behaviour of the device is presented. The optimisation problem is solved using a genetic algorithm with constraints of geometry and structural integrity. The proposed procedure is implemented in the design and manufacture of an energy harvesting device for a railway bridge on an in-service high-speed line. To do so, first the methodology is validated experimentally under laboratory conditions and shown to offer strong performance. Next the in-situ railway bridge is instrumented using accelerometers and the results used to evaluate energy harvesting performance. The results show the energy harvested in a time window of three and a half hours (20 train passages) is E=109.32 mJ . The proposed methodology is particularly useful for bridges with fundamental mode shapes above 4.5 Hz, however optimal design curves are also presented for the most common railway bridges found in practice. A novelty of this work is the use of additive manufacturing to 3D print energy harvesters, thus maximising design flexibility and energy performance.

This paper investigates the optimal design of 3D printed energy harvesters for railway bridges. The type of harvester studied is a cantilever bimorph beam with a mass at the tip and a load resistance. These parameters are adjusted to find the optimal design that tunes the harvester to the fundamental frequency of the bridge. An analytical model based on a variational formulation to represent the electromechanical behaviour of the device is presented. The optimisation problem is solved using a genetic algorithm with constraints of geometry and structural integrity. The proposed procedure is implemented in the design and manufacture of an energy harvesting device for a railway bridge on an in-service high-speed line. To do so, first the methodology is validated experimentally under laboratory conditions and shown to offer strong performance. Next the in-situ railway bridge is instrumented using accelerometers and the results used to evaluate energy harvesting performance. The results show the energy harvested in a time window of three and a half hours (20 train passages) is E=109.32 mJ . The proposed methodology is particularly useful for bridges with fundamental mode shapes above 4.5 Hz, however optimal design curves are also presented for the most common railway bridges found in practice. A novelty of this work is the use of additive manufacturing to 3D print energy harvesters, thus maximising design flexibility and energy performance.

It is unusual, and can be difficult, for scientists to reflect in their publications on any limitations their research had. This is a consequence of the extreme pressure that scientists are under to ‘publish or perish’. The inevitable consequence is that much published research is not as good as it could, and should, be, leading to the current ‘reproducibility crisis’. Approaches to address this crisis are required. Our suggestion is to include a ‘Limitations’ section in all scientific papers. Evidence is provided showing that such a section must be mandatory. Adding a ‘Limitations’ section to scientific papers would greatly increase honesty, openness and transparency, to the considerable benefit of both the scientific community and society in general. This suggestion is applicable to all scientific disciplines. Finally, we apologise if our suggestion has already been made by others.

This paper presents a fully on-chip HV-regulated DC–DC boost converter for the power management unit of an electrical neural stimulator. The core of the DC–DC converter consists of a 4x4 array of individually-configurable charge pumps. The rows and columns of the array can be dynamically enabled or disabled, thus extending the range of suitable output voltages and load currents. Additionally, the converter includes a feedback loop for output voltage regulation which allows responding to abrupt changes in the load current within a few microseconds. The circuit has been designed in a standard 180 nm 1.8V/3.3V CMOS process and occupies an active area of 2.1 mm2. An exhaustive experimental characterization of the proposed circuit was carried out. Experimental results demonstrate that, for an input voltage of 3 V, the DC–DC converter’s regulated output ranges from 4.2 V to 13.2 V under load currents of 0.1–4 mA. Maximum delivered power is around 48 mW. The power efficiency of the converter at the highest achievable output voltage under a 4 mA load current is higher than 65% for input voltages above 2.4 V.

This special issue contains the revised and extended versions of three papers presented in the 4th Workshop on Advances in Model-Based Testing (A-MOST 2008). In addition to an executive summary of these three papers, this preface briefly reviews the papers published in the four editions of the A-MOST workshop. We hope that the reader will find this special issue interesting and informative., Sección Deptal. de Sistemas Informáticos y Computación, Fac. de Ciencias Matemáticas, TRUE, pub

This paper examines how natural language processing algorithms, utilizing textual analysis, can aid in comprehending the decision-making process of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the factors influencing its monetary policy decisions in periods of high inflation, specifically, Feb 1979–Dec 1986 and Feb 2018–Feb 2023. The analysis uncovers common themes such as the economy and growth, along with remarkable differences in the language used. Volcker’s focus was on combating high inflation through interest rates, economic growth, and money supply, whereas Powell’s focus centered on discussing inflation more than relevant policy responses such as interest rates or asset purchases. These findings suggest that unlike Powell, Volcker took high inflation as a given and concentrated on policy actions to fight inflation, which he successfully managed.

Producción Científica, In recent years, the number of embedded computing devices connected to the Internet has exponentially increased. At the same time, new applications are becoming more complex and computationally demanding, which can be a problem for devices, especially when they are battery powered. In this context, the concepts of computation offloading and edge computing, which allow applications to be fully or partially offloaded and executed on servers close to the devices in the network, have arisen and received increasing attention. Then, the design of algorithms to make the decision of which applications or tasks should be offloaded, and where to execute them, is crucial. One of the options that has been gaining momentum lately is the use of Reinforcement Learning (RL) and, in particular, Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL), which enables learning optimal or near-optimal offloading policies adapted to each particular scenario. Although the use of RL techniques to solve the computation offloading problem in edge systems has been covered by some surveys, it has been done in a limited way. For example, some surveys have analysed the use of RL to solve various networking problems, with computation offloading being one of them, but not the primary focus. Other surveys, on the other hand, have reviewed techniques to solve the computation offloading problem, being RL just one of the approaches considered. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey that specifically focuses on the use of RL and DRL techniques for computation offloading in edge computing system. We present a comprehensive and detailed survey, where we analyse and classify the research papers in terms of use cases, network and edge computing architectures, objectives, RL algorithms, decision-making approaches, and time-varying characteristics considered in the analysed scenarios. In particular, we include a series of tables to help researchers identify relevant papers based on specific features, and analyse wh, Consejería de Educación de la Junta de Castilla y León y FEDER (VA231P20), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación y Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Proyecto PID2020-112675RB-C42, PID2021-124463OBI00 y RED2018-102585-T, financiados por MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033)

All systems and components are unreliable in the sense that they will fail. While a failed component in a system is being repaired (i.e., corrective maintenance), preventive maintenance (PM) may be conducted on the other components to improve the reliability of the system. The selection of different components for PM may result in a variety of maintenance policies with different cost implications. It is therefore necessary to develop appropriate tools such as importance measures to guide engineers in selecting components for PM in order to minimise relevant costs. There is little research, nevertheless, that jointly minimises the total expected cost of maintenance and maximises the number of components for PM. To fill in this gap, this paper proposes an importance index, Cost-Informed Component Maintenance Index (CICMI). It then derives some propositions of the proposed index and different maintenance policies, respectively. A method to optimise the number of components for PM subject to cost constraints is then proposed. A case study on a reactor coolant system is performed to illustrate the applicability of the proposed methods.

Contaminants of emerging concern and other chemicals are widespread in the environment. While their effects are ambiguous, a wealth of literature now illustrates their ability to induce various effects at concentrations/doses smaller than the toxicological threshold, leading to hormetic biphasic responses. Such responses are increasingly understood, can be positive or negative, and present an issue for wastewater reuse and reclamation for agriculture and other purposes. Considerable efforts have been placed by stakeholders at multiple levels to address the issue of low-dose effects, but there is more that can be done. To effectively address the low-dose issue, treatment/remediation sites for pollutant elimination should be improved, the number and amounts of chemicals released to the environment should be better controlled/prevented, and citizen-science approach with the involvement of NGOs and other organizations should be employed to expand the coverage of assessing pollution and its effects. This Opinion paper summarizes the main challenges introduced by the continuous discovery of emerging contaminants in the environment and the low-dose effects, discusses what has been done by stakeholders to address low-dose effects, and proposes a path forward.

Code comments are important artifacts in software systems and play a paramount role in many software engineering (SE) tasks related to maintenance and program comprehension. However, while it is widely accepted that high quality matters in code comments just as it matters in source code, assessing comment quality in practice is still an open problem. First and foremost, there is no unique definition of quality when it comes to evaluating code comments. The few existing studies on this topic rather focus on specific attributes of quality that can be easily quantified and measured. Existing techniques and corresponding tools may also focus on comments bound to a specific programming language, and may only deal with comments with specific scopes and clear goals (e.g., Javadoc comments at the method level, or in-body comments describing TODOs to be addressed). In this paper, we present a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) of the last decade of research in SE to answer the following research questions: (i) What types of comments do researchers focus on when assessing comment quality? (ii) What quality attributes (QAs) do they consider? (iii) Which tools and techniques do they use to assess comment quality?, and (iv) How do they evaluate their studies on comment quality assessment in general? Our evaluation, based on the analysis of 2353 papers and the actual review of 47 relevant ones, shows that (i) most studies and techniques focus on comments in Java code, thus may not be generalizable to other languages, and (ii) the analyzed studies focus on four main QAs of a total of 21 QAs identified in the literature, with a clear predominance of checking consistency between comments and the code. We observe that researchers rely on manual assessment and specific heuristics rather than the automated assessment of the comment quality attributes, with evaluations often involving surveys of students and the authors of the original studies but rarely professional developers.