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With the proliferation of e-commerce, the regional hub of a large-scale logistics company is required to sort and load a large number of packages into different delivery vehicles by dawn and deliver them to customers by noon on a daily basis. The efficiency of the sorting operation is thus a competitive advantage which directly impacts the company's service level. In this study, a data-driven business intelligence system for the semi-automated sorting facility is proposed for real-world implementation. To determine the cargo handling sequence, an information-based approach with a multi-criteria index function is developed. Then a simulation-based optimisation framework, which integrates a multi-objective search algorithm with a simulation model, is employed to fine-tune the parameters of the index function to perform optimally. The results of the numerical experiment show that the proposed technique is able to reduce 20% of the sorting operation duration, which equals a reduction of about 3600 man-hours per year. The study is a good example of applying emerging technologies in the logistics industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within public health control strategies for SARS-CoV-2, whole genome sequencing (WGS) is essential for tracking viral spread and monitoring the emergence of variants which may impair the effectiveness of vaccines, diagnostic methods, and therapeutics. In this manuscript different strategies for SARS-CoV-2 WGS including metagenomic shotgun (SG), library enrichment by myBaits® Expert Virus-SARS-CoV-2 (Arbor Biosciences), nCoV-2019 sequencing protocol, ampliseq approach by Swift Amplicon® SARS-CoV-2 Panel kit (Swift Biosciences), and Illumina COVIDSeq Test (Illumina Inc.), were evaluated in order to identify the best approach in terms of results, labour, and costs. The analysis revealed that Illumina COVIDSeq Test (Illumina Inc.) is the best choice for a cost-effective, time-consuming production of consensus sequences.

An efficient part feeding is among the top challenges of many mass producers applying mixed-model assembly lines, for instance, in the automotive industry. This paper introduces a novel part feeding policy applied by a large German assembly plant for car engines: In-line kitting. Under this policy, the first stations of the line do not execute assembly operations, but are reserved for picking parts while passing containers of stock-keeping units (SKUs) arranged along the line. In this way, the parts are collected in traveling kits moving along with each workpiece on the conveyor, so that later assembly stations have the required parts directly available and do not lose precious labor time for unproductive parts handling. A major operational challenge when applying this part feeding policy is the walking effort for the human pickers while putting the SKUs of their respective stations into the traveling kits of the passing workpieces. Due to a high product variety, a large number of comparatively bulky SKU containers have to fit into each station, so that the walking distance to be covered by a worker during a work shift exceeds multiple kilometers. We show that this physical burden can be reduced significantly by balancing the workload among stations and optimizing the storage assignment of SKU containers within each in-line kitting station. We formulate the resulting optimization problem and provide suited solution procedures. Our computational study shows that the walking distance of pickers can be reduced significantly without producing any additional costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimization of antenna performance is a non-linear, multi-dimensional and complex issue, which entails a significant investment of time and labor. In this paper, a hybrid algorithm of quasi-opposition grey wolf optimization (QOGWO) and Gaussian process regression (GPR) model is proposed for antenna optimization. The QOGWO is prone to global optimality, high precision for complex problems, and fast convergence rate at the later stage. The GPR model can reduce time cost of antenna samples generation. After being optimized by the proposed approach, a stepped ultrawideband monopole antenna and a dual-band MIMO antenna for WLAN can achieve wider bandwidth and higher gain or isolation at low time cost, compared to other intelligent algorithms and published literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reproductive domestic labor is shifting from its old norm of invisibly creating and maintaining labor power in the highly private and ostensibly non-economic zone of the household. This paper asks whether new forms of complex motherhood, and the means presented to mothers for coping with them in the digital age, should be conceived of as further unpaid labor that sits on top of old forms of exploitation. As mothers increasingly become digital reproductive laborers, the family home is becoming a public and highly economized zone: a workhouse for both standard employers and emerging parties who designate themselves as merely providing online services. In contrast to the frequently posited thesis that mothers are only indirectly drawn into the circuit of capital, this paper argues that the current situation creates the "mother commodity": a being whose social reproductive labor time is supercommodified via the normative addition of "audience commodity" labor duties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the commodity-money system that prevailed at the time of his research, Marx assumed the monetary expression of labor time (MELT) to be fixed. This assumption cannot hold in the contemporary regime of non-commodity money. It is essential to resolve the question of how the MELT is determined in a system of non-commodity money. The expression is the ratio of the total paper money circulating in the economy, less all paper money advanced on constant capital, to the total number of socially necessary labor hours exerted in the economy. Expressed algebraically, m = (Mv − C)/L. This model differs from those proposed by Moseley; Saros; Rieu, Lee, and Ahn; and Foley. JEL Classification : B51, E11 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Virginia Herpetological Society conducted a one-day herp survey at the future site of Powhatan State Park on 8 May 2010. During that survey, 15 species of amphibians and nine species of reptiles were documented. On 20 May 2023, thirteen years after the first survey, the park was revisited. During this survey, 25 species of amphibians and reptiles were documented including 15 species of amphibians and 10 species of reptiles. The most frequently found species was the Northern Cricket Frog with 63 being observed. In all 204 animals were observed during the survey period. Forty people contributed 218 person-hours of effort surveying the park during the one-day survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the potential responses of international labor mobility to the recent COVID-19 health shocks, using a New Economic Geography model inspired by recent events in Central and North America. The model suggests that the restraining impact of COVID-19 on migratory flows may retain potential emigrants in Mexico and Central America, enlarge the home market in the region, attract foreign and local businesses, and increase real wages. Moreover, this prediction unveils opportunities for the future from the opening of new, regular migratory pathways between Central America and Mexico. These would concentrate population and industry in Mexico, raise the market potential in the area and boost real wages in Mexico – and possibly in Central America as well – despite the partial deindustrialization of the Central American hinterland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parthenogenesis, reproduction by females via unfertilised gametes, is widespread in insects but there is only one documented example among the Odonata. Ischnura hastata (Say) (Coenagrionidae) reproduces sexually across its wide range in the Americas from southern Canada to Brazil but has parthenogenetic populations comprising only females in the Azores islands in the eastern Atlantic Ocean. Recent circumstantial evidence suggests that the Australian damselfly Agriocnemis rubricauda Tillyard may also have sexual and parthenogenetic populations. The distribution of A. rubricauda was mapped and the monthly occurrence of males and females of A. rubricauda collated based on specimens in collections, our own photographic records and collections from extensive searches in south-eastern Queensland and north-eastern New South Wales and other photographic records submitted to iNaturalist. There appears to be a substantial gap in the range of A. rubricauda in coastal Queensland, with northern records from the Top End of the Northern Territory and Queensland wet tropics, and southern records from southern Queensland and northeastern New South Wales. Male A. rubricauda are known only from the northern part of the range where there are similar numbers of records of males and females. Only females are known from the southern range where there are records of more than 320 individuals including 41 specimens in museum collections. Despite an estimated 96 person-hours of search effort across eleven locations in south-eastern Queensland and north-eastern New South Wales we encountered only females. In the northern and southern parts of the range, A. rubricauda adults have been recorded across most and all months of the year, respectively. We explore several explanations for the lack of males in the southern range and suggest that the most plausible explanation is that southern females are able to reproduce via parthenogenesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban areas are rapidly expanding globally. The detection of settlement expansion can, however, be challenging due to the rapid rate of expansion, especially for informal settlements. This paper presents a solution in the form of an unsupervised autocorrelation-based approach. Temporal autocorrelation function (ACF) values derived from hyper-temporal Sentinel-1 imagery were calculated for all time lags using VV backscatter values. Various thresholds were applied to these ACF values in order to create urban change maps. Two different orbital combinations were tested over four informal settlement areas in South Africa. Promising results were achieved in the two of the study areas with mean normalized Matthews Correlation Coefficients (MCCn) of 0.79 and 0.78. A lower performance was obtained in the remaining two areas (mean MCCn of 0.61 and 0.65) due to unfavorable building orientations and low building densities. The first results also indicate that the most stable and optimal ACF-based threshold of 95 was achieved when using images from both relative orbits, thereby incorporating more incidence angles. The results demonstrate the capacity of ACF-based methods for detecting settlement expansion. Practically, this ACF-based method could be used to reduce the time and labor costs of detecting and mapping newly built settlements in developing regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Local anesthetics administered via epidural catheters have evolved from intermittent top-ups to simultaneous administration of continuous epidural infusion (CEI) and patient-controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) using the same device. The latest programmed intermittent epidural bolus (PIEB) model is believed to create a wider and more even distribution of analgesia inside the epidural space. The switch from CEI + PCEA to PIEB + PCEA in our department began in 2018; however, we received conflicting feedback regarding workload from the quality assurance team. This study aimed to investigate the benefits and drawbacks of this conversion, including the differences in acute pain service (APS) staff workload, maternal satisfaction, side effects, and complications before and after the changeover. Materials and Methods: Items from the APS records included total delivery time, average local anesthetic dosage, and the formerly mentioned items. The incidence of side effects, the association between the duration of delivery and total dosage, and hourly medication usage in the time subgroups of the CEI and PIEB groups were compared. The staff workload incurred from rescue bolus injection, catheter adjustment, and dosage adjustment was also analyzed. Results: The final analysis included 214 and 272 cases of CEI + PCEA and PIEB + PCEA for labor analgesia, respectively. The total amount of medication and average hourly dosage were significantly lower in the PIEB + PCEA group. The incidences of dosage change, manual bolus, extra visits per patient, and lidocaine use for rescue bolus were greater in the PIEB + PCEA group, indicating an increased staff workload. However, the two groups did not differ in CS rates, labor time, maternal satisfaction, and side effects. Conclusions: This study revealed that while PIEB + PCEA maintained the advantage of decreasing total drug doses, it inadvertently increased the staff burden. Increased workload might be a consideration in clinical settings when choosing between different methods of PCEA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-phase computed tomography (CT) images have gained significant popularity in the diagnosis of hepatic disease. There are several challenges in the liver segmentation of multi-phase CT images. (1) Annotation: due to the distinct contrast enhancements observed in different phases (i.e., each phase is considered a different domain), annotating all phase images in multi-phase CT images for liver or tumor segmentation is a task that consumes substantial time and labor resources. (2) Poor contrast: some phase images may have poor contrast, making it difficult to distinguish the liver boundary. In this paper, we propose a boundary-enhanced liver segmentation network for multi-phase CT images with unsupervised domain adaptation. The first contribution is that we propose DD-UDA, a dual discriminator-based unsupervised domain adaptation, for liver segmentation on multi-phase images without multi-phase annotations, effectively tackling the annotation problem. To improve accuracy by reducing distribution differences between the source and target domains, we perform domain adaptation at two levels by employing two discriminators, one at the feature level and the other at the output level. The second contribution is that we introduce an additional boundary-enhanced decoder to the encoder–decoder backbone segmentation network to effectively recognize the boundary region, thereby addressing the problem of poor contrast. In our study, we employ the public LiTS dataset as the source domain and our private MPCT-FLLs dataset as the target domain. The experimental findings validate the efficacy of our proposed methods, producing substantially improved results when tested on each phase of the multi-phase CT image even without the multi-phase annotations. As evaluated on the MPCT-FLLs dataset, the existing baseline (UDA) method achieved IoU scores of 0.785, 0.796, and 0.772 for the PV, ART, and NC phases, respectively, while our proposed approach exhibited superior performance, surpassing both the baseline and other state-of-the-art methods. Notably, our method achieved remarkable IoU scores of 0.823, 0.811, and 0.800 for the PV, ART, and NC phases, respectively, emphasizing its effectiveness in achieving accurate image segmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agrobacterium -mediated transformation (AMT) potentially has great advantages over other DNA introduction methods: e.g., long DNA and numerous recipient strains can be dealt with at a time merely by co-cultivation with donor Agrobacterium cells. However, AMT was applied only to several laboratory yeast strains, and has never been considered as a standard gene-introduction method for yeast species. To disseminate the AMT method in yeast species, it is necessary to develop versatile AMT plasmid vectors including shuttle type ones, which have been unavailable yet for yeasts. In this study, we constructed a series of AMT plasmid vectors that consist of replicative (shuttle)- and integrative-types and harbor a gene conferring resistance to either G418 or aureobasidin A for application to prototrophic yeast strains. The vectors were successfully applied to five industrial yeast strains belonging to Saccharomyces cerevisiae after a modification of a previous AMT protocol, i.e., simply inputting a smaller number of yeast cells to the co-cultivation than that in the previous protocol. The revised protocol enabled all five yeast strains to generate recombinant colonies not only at high efficiency using replicative-type vectors, but also readily at an efficiency around 10−5 using integrative one. Further modification of the protocol demonstrated AMT for multiple yeast strains at a time with less labor. Therefore, AMT would facilitate molecular genetic approaches to many yeast strains in basic and applied sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research was carried out by project planning and controlling to analyze the time duration and cost of adding labor and overtime hours at work on amendments to the construction of a hospital Hemodialysis unit located in Tangerang with the accelerated crashing method. Research analysis to see project planning and project control of amendments to the work of building a Hemodialysis unit for Crashing analysis work carried out by the accelerated method of adding working hours, adding labor and the combination of time duration to find the most optimal value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the low female labor participation in Mexico and proposes that it is due to labor discouragement caused by the wage gap. It is concluded that women are more likely to enter the labor market when the perception of the wage gap is reduced, and they withdraw when it increases. The importance of reducing the wage gap to increase female labor participation is highlighted. Additionally, it is mentioned that wage discrimination is still present in the world and that there are differences in the wage gap according to the sector and region of residence. [Extracted from the article]

Many odontocetes produce whistles that feature characteristic contour shapes in spectrogram representations of their calls. Automatically extracting the time × frequency tracks of whistle contours has numerous subsequent applications, including species classification, identification, and density estimation. Deep-learning-based methods, which train models using analyst-annotated whistles, offer a promising way to reliably extract whistle contours. However, the application of such methods can be limited by the significant amount of time and labor required for analyst annotation. To overcome this challenge, a technique that learns from automatically generated pseudo-labels has been developed. These annotations are less accurate than those generated by human analysts but more cost-effective to generate. It is shown that standard training methods do not learn effective models from these pseudo-labels. An improved loss function designed to compensate for pseudo-label error that significantly increases whistle extraction performance is introduced. The experiments show that the developed technique performs well when trained with pseudo-labels generated by two different algorithms. Models trained with the generated pseudo-labels can extract whistles with an F1-score (the harmonic mean of precision and recall) of 86.31% and 87.2% for the two sets of pseudo-labels that are considered. This performance is competitive with a model trained with 12 539 expert-annotated whistles (F1-score of 87.47%). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) have higher rates of adverse perinatal outcomes compared with women without GDM, including an increased risk for having labor induced and for cesarean section. The findings from previous studies analyzing duration of labor in women with GDM are contradictory. The aim of the study was to evaluate the impact of GDM on time in spontaneous and induced active labor. Material and methods: This was a population‐based cohort study including 247 524 primiparous women who gave birth to a singleton fetus with cephalic presentation, ≥34+0 (completed gestational weeks + additional days) between January 2014 and May 2020 in Sweden. Data was obtained from the Swedish Pregnancy Register. Time in active labor was compared between women with GDM and without GDM with a spontaneous labor onset or induction of labor using Kaplan Meier survival analysis and Cox regression analysis. Results: Women with GDM had significantly longer time in active labor, both with a spontaneous onset and induction of labor compared to women without GDM. Women with GDM had a decreased chance of vaginal delivery at a certain time‐point compared to women without GDM, with adjusted hazard ratio of 0.92 (0.88–0.96) and 0.83 (0.76–0.90) for those with spontaneous onset and induction of labor, respectively. Women with GDM had increased risk for time in active labor ≥12 h both in spontaneous labor onset (adjusted odds ratio 1.14 [1.04–1.25]) and in induction of labor (adjusted odds ratio 1.55 [1.28–1.87]). Conclusions: Women with GDM seem to spend a longer time in active labor, both in spontaneous and induced active labor compared to women without GDM. To be able to individualize care intrapartum, there is a need for more studies demonstrating the impact of hyperglycemia during pregnancy on outcomes during childbirth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of cost, time and labor intensity in the construction process is very important, but there is a problem of poor optimization effect. The standard genetic algorithm cannot solve the problem of index optimization in the construction process, and the optimization rationality is low. Therefore, this paper proposes an improved genetic algorithm to study the objectives of construction projects. Firstly, the k-value clustering theory is used to analyze the characteristic values of the index and divide them according to the changing trend to reduce the disturbance factors in optimization. Then, the k-value clustering theory is used to search for the child-parent node of the indicator to form the final optimization result and complete the multi-objective optimization. MATLAB simulation shows that under certain optimization criteria, improving the genetic algorithm can improve the rationality of multi-objective optimization, and the optimization time is shorter than that standard improves genetic algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the digital era, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has become an important technology in the field of information technology. The purpose of this article is to apply RPA technology to the digital labor time management system of enterprises to improve management efficiency and accuracy. This article mainly used data comparison and mathematical model analysis methods to draw conclusions and provide specific solutions. The experimental results showed that the minimum time reduction rate for robot process automation was 19.5%. The RPA solution for digital labor time management system has the characteristics of sustainable development, convenient management, and strong systematicity, which has great promotion and application value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a flexible method for designing a bandpass filter (BPF) using pixel structure and genetic algorithm (GA) optimization. The pixel structure is made up of a grid of metallic microstrip stubs, and the GA is utilized to determine the connections between these stubs. The pixel structure enables the construction of step impedance and shunt branches, which are used to design a traditional BPF. To enhance the design freedom, one side of the discrete grids is connected to the ground via metallic holes. For verification, a BPF was designed, simulated, and measured. The experimental results showed that the 10 dB return loss bandwidth ranges from 1.1 to 1.9 GHz and the insertion loss is approximately 2.5 dB. There is good agreement between the calculation, EM simulation, and measurement results. The proposed GA-based design method offers significant advantages in terms of one-time EM simulation, feasibility, and labor time savings, making it more convenient than the traditional design method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the role of rose production in building social ties in a small Bulgarian village. I argue that the specificity of rose production, namely the need to mobilize a lot of labor in a short time, leads to the construction of a system of exchange of services and lasting mutual dependencies between people of different generations, classes and ethnic groups in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities follow a long tradition of assigning students to courses based on student preferences while taking into account constraints such as the rooms to be used. In this context, theoretical approaches aid us in developing algorithms that can be helpful in practice. Our contribution to this subject is a practice summary in which we discuss the most important findings of a project to develop a MATLAB-based stand-alone software system to solve the seminar assignment problem at the FernUniversität in Hagen, Germany. The use of our software at three departments has already enabled annual savings of nearly 20,000 euros in personnel costs, which corresponds to a reduction of around 500 person-hours per year. Apart from important technical aspects of our work, the reported savings potential provides valuable information for making decisions on future similar software projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Panorama Económico is the property of Universidad de Cartagena and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In recent years, the number of websites has been increasing, and with it, the number of similar services. As a result, UX is becoming more and more important to measure the differentiation of a website from its competitors, and UI plays a major role in improving UX. Website developers implement a development process called HCD to improve UI. However, in HCD, there is a gap between the perception of the evaluator and the developer, resulting in a lot of man‐hours. In this paper, we propose a method for evaluating web pages using GUI operations to solve this problem. We let the evaluator of the web page edit the web page by mouse operation from the browser, and feedback the result directly to the developer. As a result of the experiment, we were able to discover problems with the web pages that could not be obtained by the conventional questionnaire. It also made it easier to design improvement plans, leading to a reduction in man‐hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After onions, garlic is the Allium that is used most commonly. The edible component of this plant is a complex bulb. It has been used for a number of food preservation techniques in India and other central eastern nations. There is a large amount of garlic that is typically eaten as peeled cloves. Traditionally, garlic cloves are separated and peeled using hot water, flame, oven, crushing and shaking methods. It takes a lot of time and labor to use these conventional methods. The current study was conducted at a commercial peeled garlic supplier close to Fatehpura, Mandvigate, and Vadodara. The garlic peeler is made up of the feed hopper, vertical cylinder, compressor unit, cleaning and discharge equipment, and main frame. The garlic peeler was evaluated with three Feed rate levels: 72, 108 and 144kg/h. According to observation and calculations the optimum performance was noticed at108 kg/h feed rateover all other treatments where avg. peeling efficiency was obtained86.28% as well as minimum damage to the garlic cloves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assuming a long-term feedback loop between attitudes about gender divisions of labor and family policy, we examine such attitudes in Germany, Austria, and Sweden, between 1994 and 2012. Using a longitudinal, case study approach, we argue that attitudes on the gender division of labor need to be put in relation to both recent family policy changes and a country's gender regime. Employing latent class analysis, we examine the prevalence of different views on gender division of labor over time and test for measurement invariance to assess whether characteristics of attitudinal groups change across years. Results show increasing support for maternal employment within traditional groups in eastern and western Germany, potentially reflecting shifting policy within a changing gender regime. Simultaneously, intensive mothering and traditional attitudes remain more prevalent in Austria and western Germany than in eastern Germany and Sweden, indicating a persistent maternalist ideal among segments of these historically domestic gender regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on digital twin, a real-time assembly man-hours workshop scheduling model was proposed, considering the uncertainty of assembly man-hours in the process of product customization and frequent dynamic disturbances in the assembly workshop. The overall architecture of assembly workshop scheduling based on digital twin was constructed. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology was used to collect real-time working hours data of physical assembly workshops, and the real-time assembly working hours were processed by using the improved Rete algorithm. A mathematical model of assembly workshop scheduling based on real-time assembly man-hours was established, and an improved artificial fish swarm-taboo algorithm was used to solve the model, so as to realize the scheduling optimization of the real-time assembly man-hours workshop. The empirical result shows that the model algorithm has certain feasibility and superiority in real-time assembly man-hours workshop scheduling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article follows the history of the Dawei special economic zone (SEZ), a port, industrial zone, and logistics project located in Myanmar's southern borderlands. Suspended in 2013 due to financing shortfalls and public criticism, the Dawei project's implementation has been far from straightforward. This article dwells on the non-linear temporality of the project, focusing on the problem of financing. It is there, above all, that project proponents continually entertain both prospects of progress and frustrating obstacles. This story of financing shows, I argue, that frontiers are temporal projects, constituted by fits and starts, slowdowns and accelerations, and periods of deferral and delay. Beginning with the project's origins and moving through recent attempts to revive it, I foreground three moments of labor in and of time – three timescapes, in short – which I describe in terms of futurity and deferral, boom and bust, and suspension and renewal. The complex temporality of the project raises doubts about the notion that capitalist modernity consists of a singular, abstract, homogeneous time – defined by acceleration, speed, or time–space compression. On this frontier, rather, the inter-mingling of multiple times suggests not vestiges of the premodern, but the heterogeneous timescapes – unstable, unruly, uneven – that compose capitalist modernity itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The assessment of labor progress is germane to every woman in labor. Two labor disorders—arrest of dilation and arrest of descent—are the primary indications for surgery in close to 50% of all intrapartum cesarean deliveries and are often contributing indications for cesarean deliveries for fetal heart rate abnormalities. Beginning in 1954, the assessment of labor progress was transformed by Friedman. He published a series of seminal works describing the relationship between cervical dilation, station of the presenting part, and time. He proposed nomenclature for the classification of labor disorders. Generations of obstetricians used this terminology and normal labor curves to determine expected rates of dilation and fetal descent and to decide when intervention was required. The analysis of labor progress presents many mathematical challenges. Clinical measurements of dilation and station are imprecise and prone to variation, especially for inexperienced observers. Many interrelated factors influence how the cervix dilates and how the fetus descends. There is substantial variability in when data collection begins and in the frequency of examinations. Statistical methods to account for these issues have advanced considerably in recent decades. In parallel, there is growing recognition among clinicians of the limitations of using time alone to assess progress in cervical dilation in labor. There is wide variation in the patterns of dilation over time and most labors do not follow an average dilation curve. Reliable assessment of labor progression is important because uncertainty leads to both over-use and under-use of cesarean delivery and neither of these extremes are desirable. This review traces the evolution of labor curves, describes how limitations are being addressed to reduce uncertainty and to improve the assessment of labor progression using modern statistical techniques and multi-dimensional data, and discusses the implications for obstetrical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Smart Rail Transit is the property of Smart Rail Transit Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The branching plasticity of soybean, i.e. its ability to adjust branch development to planting density, differs among cultivars. Field experiments are required to measure the degree of branching plasticity, but such experiments require a great deal of time and labor, and it is difficult to analyze and compare a large number of cultivars. A simple evaluation method needs to be established to investigate branching plasticity for a wide range of materials. Therefore, we conducted two methods to estimate this value. In the first method, we investigated the relationship between the number of branching nodes and intra-row planting distance with a gradient of distance between plants (5, 7.5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30 cm). The slope of the regression line between these two factors revealed significant differences among soybean cultivars, and was correlated with the measured values of branching plasticity determined in field experiments in 2015 and 2017. In the second method, the top of the stem was pinched out between the first and second leaf nodes at the V4 stage, and then the number of branch nodes was counted at maturity. There were differences in the number of branching nodes among cultivars, and a significant positive correlation between these values and the branching plasticity values measured in the 2015 and 2017 field experiments. Considering the time and effort required for field management and morphological surveys, the pinching method is considered to be an effective and simple method to evaluate branching plasticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internships have skyrocketed in popularity as they become the new entry-level position for professional careers across the country. Despite their popularity, the legality of internships falls in a gray area created by a vague statute and a flexible, factor-based judicial test. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which regulates employment relationships and importantly mandates a minimum wage and hour requirements, was written long before internships became commonplace and provides little direction for how to regulate these positions. In this void, both the Department of Labor and federal courts have developed guidance, the ultimate culmination of which is the modern primary beneficiary test. The equestrian industry's attempt at internships is a position known as a "working student." These positions did not arise in the same Petrie dish or era as many other internships. Instead, this type of internship is an ages-old derivative of the barter economy and apprenticeships. In short, a young, developing equestrian exchanges her labor for benefits such as training and housing--but, notably, not FLSA-complaint wages--with a professional equestrian. This position is seen both as a rite of passage into a career as an equestrian but also as an opportunity to test the waters of the industry. Working students work long hours, take on physically intensive tasks, and are often fully immersed in the industry and their positions. Do these positions pass the modern primary beneficiary test? This Note applies the factors of the test to the facts of the working student position and asserts that, for many working students, the answer is 'no.' This analysis is largely based on an extensive survey and interviews with working students, which were compiled by the Author and further explained within. Finally, this Note suggests solutions that will preserve the significant benefits of the working student position while bringing the equestrian industry into compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We refute the objection raised against Marx's theory of value by Philip Mirowski (that it is an internally inconsistent amalgam of the substance and social model of value) by identifying value insofar as it subsists between production and exchange with the property in statistical mechanics known as thermodynamic depth. In production, concrete labor time is converted into the thermodynamic depth embodied in commodities. In exchange, the thermodynamic depth of commodities is converted back into time again, albeit, at this point in the circuit, the time into which it is converted is socially necessary labor time, i.e., abstract labor. Consistently with the social model of value, value increases can (as Mirowski points out) arise where changes in the conversion factor between time and thermodynamic depth take place between production and exchange, but (consistently with the substance model) the thermodynamic depth of commodities can only be increased in production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract In this field study of the labor process of food delivery workers, we examine the new rules of time and new forms of labor time control in the food delivery industry. Food delivery platforms attract laborers with the flexibility of working time and place but simultaneously strictly surveil the labor process of delivery workers, thus establishing a multidimensional body of control consisting of the platform and customers. At the same time, platform mechanisms of “grab the order” and “wait for the order” help platforms subtly control delivery workers’ experience, thoughts, and emotions. These mechanisms create a sense of time characterized by “punctuality” and “speed,” making delivery workers “all-day workers.” Delivery workers come to delivery platforms in search of work freedom, but in the end, they become constrained by platforms. Helpless, they voluntarily subject themselves to the time control of the platform, while the latter obtains profit under the guise of freedom.

Based on the idea of contact instrument integration, a device which can be used to effectively detect the result of hole-forming and sediment in bored cast -in -place piles is developed and improved in order to solve the problems of cumbersome detection steps in hole-forming quality and sediment thickness of bored cast-in-place piles. The device comprises a support moving system, a power driving system and a detection system. The function of the device in measurement of borehole diameter and perpendicularity, sediment thickness and borehole depth is tested on the basis of the waterway regulation project of the Changjiang River Estuary on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal. The results show that, compared with the existing hole forming detection equipment, the improved equipment can complete the detection of hole-forming and sediment thickness atone go. The equipment has the advantages of simple operation, wide application range, high detection accuracy, and low time and labor cost. The device has the potential of large-scale application in bored cast-in-situ pile construction and can produce better economic and social benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This explains why Flamant devotes the third part of the book to showing how prices and distribution come about - rather than taking prices as derived directly from labour value and surplus. Flamant's treatment of fixed capital highlights its two-fold character: on one hand, it is a reproducible product of labour required for production, like intermediate inputs. Profit as "surplus" is determined in the distribution of the product rather than deriving from a physical surplus product. [Extracted from the article]

Traditional identification methods for Papaver somniferum and Papaver rhoeas (PSPR) consume much time and labor, require strict experimental conditions, and usually cause damage to the plant. This work presents a novel method for fast, accurate, and nondestructive identification of PSPR. First, to fill the gap in the PSPR dataset, we construct a PSPR visible capsule image dataset. Second, we propose a modified MobileNetV3-Small network with transfer learning, and we solve the problem of low classification accuracy and slow model convergence due to the small number of PSPR capsule image samples. Experimental results demonstrate that the modified MobileNetV3-Small is effective for fast, accurate, and nondestructive PSPR classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inbreeding depression can reduce the viability of wild populations. Detecting inbreeding depression in the wild is difficult; developing accurate estimates of inbreeding can be time and labor intensive. In this study, we used a two-step modeling procedure to incorporate uncertainty inherent in estimating individual inbreeding coefficients from multilocus genotypes into estimates of inbreeding depression in a population of Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii). The two-step modeling procedure presented in this paper provides a method for estimating the magnitude of a known source of error, which is assumed absent in classic regression models, and incorporating this error into inferences about inbreeding depression. The method is essentially an errors-in-variables regression with non-normal errors in both the dependent and independent variables. These models, therefore, allow for a better evaluation of the uncertainty surrounding the biological importance of inbreeding depression in non-pedigreed wild populations. For this study we genotyped 154 adult female seals from the population in Erebus Bay, Antarctica, at 29 microsatellite loci, 12 of which are novel. We used a statistical evidence approach to inference rather than hypothesis testing because the discovery of both low and high levels of inbreeding are of scientific interest. We found evidence for an absence of inbreeding depression in lifetime reproductive success, adult survival, age at maturity, and the reproductive interval of female seals in this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bukchon area in Seoul boasts a high density of Hanok, the traditional Korean architecture representing the region. Because the Hanok facade plays a vital role in the streetscape formation, we must record it in terms of social, cultural, historical, artistic, and scenic values. However, recording the facade of an existing Hanok building through drawing or image information is time consuming and labor intensive, and therefore costly. Further, its digital conversion is inherently difficult. This study proposes the use of deep learning to identify the form elements that comprise the Hanok facade. Three-dimensional modeling was performed on 405 well-preserved Hanok facades in the region, and 2808 items of image data were created under similar conditions and at differing angles. Labeling was performed on the shape elements of the Hanok facade, and a methodology was established to identify the facade elements using MASK R-CNN. The type of roof, windows, the lower part of the outer wall, and the design were identified with high accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power take-off (PTO) shafts are widely used in agricultural machinery to directly power implements with the tractor's engine. While the operating conditions such as dirt, weather, peak loads and utilization greatly influence a PTO shaft's lifetime, proper maintenance, especially lubrication, is necessary for an appropriate operation and maximum lifetime. Hence, this paper evaluates the potential for saving resources during maintenance by using a digital maintenance assistant. To simulate and study the cost of PTO shafts for agricultural implements, an investigation of the lubrication process of PTO shafts was carried out on several test farms. In practice, two extremes are common: Either far too much grease is used for best possible lubrication, or the PTO shaft is not lubricated at all. To simulate the annual cost of maintenance, three scenarios were calculated and compared: "Maintenance before usage" and "no maintenance" as extreme scenarios and "maintenance according to the manufacturer's specifications" by a digital maintenance assistant as an optimum scenario. The simulation of different maintenance scenarios shows a reduction in maintenance costs of up to 93.8%, an average reduction of lubricants by 86.3% and an average labor time reduction by 81.8% for the case of "maintenance according to the manufacturer's specifications". The results of this work show that there is potential for major savings using a digital maintenance assistant. This development could be the first step towards the digitalization of maintenance activities on agricultural farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Target-based point cloud registration methods are still widely used by many laser scanning professionals due to their direct and manipulable nature. However, placing and moving multiple targets such as spheres for registration is a time-consuming and tactical process. When the number of scans gets large, the time and labor costs will accumulate to a high level. In this paper, we propose a flexible registration method that requires the installation of only a low-cost cubical target: a die-like object. The method includes virtual coordinate system construction and two error compensation techniques, in which the non-orthogonality of the scanned facets, along with the unknown sizes of the dice are estimated based on projection geometry and cubical constraints so that three pairs of conjugate points can be accurately identified along the axes of the constructed coordinate systems for the registration. No scan overlap of the facet is needed. Two different low-cost dice (with a volume of 0.125 m3 and 0.027 m3) were used for verifying the proposed method, which shows that the proposed method delivers registration accuracy (with an RMSE discrepancy of less than 0.5 mm for check planes) comparable to the traditional sphere- based method using four to six spherical targets spanning the scene. Therefore, the proposed method is particularly useful for registering point clouds in harsh scanning environments with limited target-setting space and high chances of target interruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In warehouse operations, stock allocation that reduces shipment-work man-hours is necessary. The existing stock allocation recommended method (i.e., Sequential Storage Location Recommendation (SSLR) method) evaluates the storage period considering lot order and the delivery frequency of each product on the storing target pallet (PL), and stores the PL with a high delivery frequency and short storage period in a high-priority area. On the other hand, in SSLR, even if the PL is stored in a low-priority area, there is a problem that picking occurs from the low-priority area when days elapse and delivery from the PL is started. Therefore, we have developed a stock movement method in which the stored PL in the warehouse is evaluated with the evaluation value that considers the delivery frequency and storage period similar to SSLR, and which moves PLs with a short remaining storage period and high delivery frequency to a high-priority area. By combining SSLR and the proposed method, it is possible to reduce the number of deliveries from low-priority areas and prevent unnecessary occupancy of PLs having a long storage period in high-priority areas. Using simulations, it was confirmed that, by combining the method with SSLR, the man-hours for shipping can be reduced when compared to the case of SSLR alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidural analgesia (EA) increases the risks of maternal fever during labor, which is associated with adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes, while the risk factors for epidural-associated fever and strategies for minimizing these effects remain limited. A total of 325 pregnant women were retrospectively analyzed who had attended our hospital for a vaginal in-hospital delivery, including 208 who voluntarily accepted EA and 117 who did not receive EA. During labor, 208 EA women were allocated to a fever group (n = 42, a tympanic temperature ≥37.5 °C during labor), and a no fever group (n = 166). The outcome measures included main maternal and neonatal outcomes, labor times, duration of EA and the total EA dosage administered. 42 out of 208 women given EA exhibited fever temperatures during labor, which were higher than in women who did not receive EA (20.19% vs. 0.85%). Maternal fever had an increased risks for conversion to surgery (adjusted odds ratio (AOR), 4.05; 95% CI, 1.44–11.39) and neonatal infections (5.13; 1.98–13.29) compared to the no fever group. While maternal fever did not increase the risks for assisted vaginal delivery, fetal distress or admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), it was predominantly associated with primiparity and lesser times of gravity. Frequent cervical examinations, the duration of first stage and total labor, and the duration of EA and its total dosage were positively correlated with the incidence of fever. Furthermore, after stratifying risk factors into subgroups, we found that more frequent cervical examinations (≥7 times) and longer duration of first stage (≥442.5 min), total labor time (≥490 min), EA (≥610.0 min) increased the risk for epidural-associated fever after adjustment for potential confounding factors. EA increased the risk of intrapartum epidural-associated fever, which was correlated with adverse perinatal outcomes. Nulliparity, less times of gravidity, ≥7 cervical examinations, increased volume of the EA dosage, prolonged duration of EA and total labor time were risk factors for epidural-associated fever. The findings provide clinicians with insights and strategies to prevent epidural-associated fever more safely and effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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