Area Cost Research Articles

Pipeline Optimization for an Economical Microsprinkler Irrigation System Based on a Hybrid Genetic Algorithm

The pipeline combination scheme is optimized to reduce the cost of irrigation units in an economical microsprinkler system. With the standard number of segments of branch and capillary pipes as the decision variables, the lowest pipe cost per unit irrigation area as the objective function, the maximum pressure difference allowed in the system, the minimum number of pipes in the network, and the shape of the irrigation area as constraints, a hybrid genetic algorithm is used to calculate the minimum cost per unit area of the pipe and the corresponding optimal combination of pipelines. The results show that when the irrigation area is a rectangular plot of 30 m × 22 m, the lowest cost of pipeline per unit area, 5192.7 RMB/hm2, is achieved when the capillary pipes are laid bidirectionally along the length of the plot. The cost of bidirectional laying of capillary pipes is less than that of unidirectional laying, and the cost of capillary pipe laid along the length direction of the plot saves 2.3% compared with that of capillary pipe laid along the width direction of the plot. The most extended length of capillary pipe on one side is 103.65 m. Compared with the cost obtained by farmers based on experience, the pipeline cost per hectare was 1.04%∼13.6% lower. It is recommended that farmers lay capillary pipes bidirectionally along the length of the plot and choose branch pipes with smaller diameters to help reduce the cost of the pipe unit area of the irrigation system.

Enhanced capacitive deionization properties of activated carbon doped with carbon nanotube-bridged molybdenum disulfide

The shortage of freshwater supplies has restricted societal development. Capacitive deionization (CDI) is an emerging technology for desalination of seawater or brackish water, the performance of which is highly dependent on electrode materials. In this work, a molybdenum disulfide/carbon nanotube composite (CNTs-b-MoS2) with high capacitance was successfully synthesized using a hydrothermal method. The composite exhibited a specific capacitance of 112.79 F g−1. To reduce costs and determine the practicality of using CNTs-b-MoS2 for CDI, we combined activated carbon (AC) with CNTs-b-MoS2 as a CDI electrode. The research demonstrated that after doping with 5% (mass ratio) CNTs-b-MoS2, the specific capacitance and electrosorption capacity of AC were significantly improved and the maximum desalination capacity of CNTs-b-MoS2/AC reached 8.19 mg g−1. The low dosage of CNTs-b-MoS2 combined with the high specific surface area of AC avoided the shortcomings of CNTs-b-MoS2, namely low specific surface area and high cost. Moreover, the outstanding conductivity of CNTs-b-MoS2 improved the conductivity and enhanced the adsorption capacity of AC, giving CNTs-b-MoS2/AC potential as an advanced, low-cost CDI electrode material.

P‐15.1: Large Area and Low Cost Fingerprint on Display Technology

We developed a large area and low cost optical fingerprint recognition product based on LTPS (low temperature poly silicon) process. A high efficient a‐Si pin sensor is introduced, the quantum efficiency under white light is 70% and the dark state current density is E‐10 A / mm2. The “one‐to‐one” and “one to multiple” structures of sensor and micro lens are compared, and the “one‐to‐one” optical path structure is systematically analyzed and evaluated. The optical path focal length is about 100 μm. The fingerprint recognition effect is significantly improved by adding a BM shading layer, and this scheme can effectively avoid the screen burning problem caused by the high luminous intensity of pixels in the fingerprint unlocking area.

Improvement of the Mechanical Properties of Reinforcing Bar Steel by Combined Deformation-Heat Treatment

The article is devoted to the improvement of the mechanical properties of reinforcing steel by means of combined deformation and heat treatment. One of the promising methods of hardening heat treatment is quenching from rolling heating (the metal is quenched immediately after leaving the finishing stand of the rolling mill). This type of heat treatment is combined with the process of hot plastic deformation and is based on the use of the residual heat of metal heating after hot rolling. It has the following advantages compared to other methods of hardening heat treatment: there is a steady relationship between the amount of martensite in the surface layers of reinforcing bars and the self-tempering temperature, which makes it possible to control and manage the process of thermal hardening of steel; the use of heat-strengthened rolled products with high mechanical properties in the sectors of the economy leads to a decrease in operating and capital costs in areas that consume hardened rolled products.

FEATURES OF FORMING THE COST OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS IN MODERN CONDITIONS OF DEVELOPMENT OF SMALL FORMS OF AGRICULTURAL FORMATIONS

Introduction. The growth of state support for crop and livestock areas of agricultural production requires agricultural economic entities to solve problems of improving the efficiency of the accounting process in terms of accounting for production costs and costing. One of the areas of state support is the development of fruit and berry and vegetable industries, where a special place is given to small forms of agribusiness. The issues of cost accounting and calculation methods in this case require additional research in order to clarify and adapt them to the specifics of the activity and the size of the economic entity. Methods. Studying the directions of state support for agriculture as well as the features of the accounting process of agricultural organizations was based on methods: analysis, synthesis, generalization and systematization. Results. In the course of the study, the directions of state support in agriculture were analyzed. The production of fruit, berry and vegetable products is defined as a promising direction of development for small forms of agribusiness, the features of cost accounting and costing of fruit, berry and vegetable products are studied, an algorithm for forming the cost in priority areas for small forms of agro-formations is presented, examples of calculating the cost of vegetable growing products are given. Conclusion. State support for agriculture, the growing role of small businesses in agribusiness, the specifics of their functioning impose special requirements on the quality of accounting support for the activities of economic entities, in particular, on cost accounting and calculation of production costs. The organization of the accounting process in this area determines the accuracy and reliability of the calculation of economic indicators necessary for making managerial decisions to find ways to reduce costs while maintaining a given level of product quality, identifying reserves, and determining promising directions for the development of the economy.

Should case management be considered a component of obstetrical interventions for pregnancies at risk of preterm birth?

Preterm birth remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among nonanomalous neonates in the United States. Unfortunately, preterm birth rates remain high despite current medical interventions such as progestogen supplementation and cerclage placement. Case management, which encompasses coordinated care aimed at providing a more comprehensive and supportive environment, is a key component in improving health and reducing costs in other areas of medicine. However, it has not made its way into the general lexicon and practice of obstetrical care. Case management intended for decreasing prematurity or ameliorating its consequences may include specialty clinics, social services, coordination of specialty services such as nutrition counseling, home visits or frequent phone calls by specially trained personnel, and other elements described herein. It is not currently included in nor is it advocated for as a recommended prematurity prevention approach in the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists or Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine guidelines for medically indicated or spontaneous preterm birth prevention. Our review of existing evidence finds consistent reductions or trends toward reductions in preterm birth with case management, particularly among individuals with high a priori risk of preterm birth across systematic reviews, metaanalyses, and randomized controlled studies. These findings suggest that case management has substantial potential to improve the environmental, behavioral, social, and psychological factors with patients at risk of preterm birth.

Вариационный принцип минимума кривизны в профилировании быков водосливов.

The paper describe application of the variational principle of minimum curvature in the development of a new method for design form spillway piers. Result of the study - new theoretical method was obtained for calculating the shape of a curvilinear piers noses with an equal effect on the carrying capacity, but having a smaller area and lower costs for building materials and construction of the structure. Analyze of the original calculation method shows that the widespread statement was found that, under equal boundary conditions, the profile constructed according to the shape of a circular arc has the smallest dimensions. Computer modeling was carried out and an analysis was made of the influence of the shape of the head of the support on the throughput of the structure.

Design optimization and optimal power management of standalone solar-hydrogen system using a new metaheuristic algorithm

Optimal configuration models and efficient energy management strategies are developed based on a standalone energy system, including hydrogen fuel cell and photovoltaic (PV) in green buildings. To optimize a hybrid scheme, integer decision variables and continuous decision variables are considered as the number of scheme components. To the optimal size of the system, the objective function is defined based on the system annual cost and loss of power supply probability (LPSP) concept for reliability. To define the optimal solution to the optimization problem, the use of three modified harmony search (MHS) algorithms are proposed, namely, MHSLD, MHSWF, and MHSLWF. These methods are compared with modified and original HS algorithms. Furthermore, three loss of power supply probability values are introduced (1 %. 2 %, and 3 %) for the optimal power management. In this regard, the effect of the PV price and reservoir tank cost variation on the justification of the systems is investigated. The simulation results reveal that the MHSWF performs with high accuracy and robustness as it obtains the minimal values of the investigated indexes for different desired reliability, βL, (1 %, 2 %, and 3 %) in all simulation runs obtained. Therefore, the ranking order of the search power of the algorithms is MHSWF > MHSLD > MHSLWF > MHS > HS. For the desired βL with 1 %, MHSWF obtained the minimal SAC values and achieved cost savings of 0.8 %, 6.1 %, 11 %, and 20.2 % as compared with four other methods, and the saving reached up to 13.2 % in the costs for other βL values. The sensitivity analyses have been performed on the results of the modeling which reveals that by the increase of the desired βL (from 1 % to 3 %), the values of PV areas, and the number of hydrogen tanks decrease by 5.4 % and 31 %, respectively, while the value of SAC decreases by 31 %.In different desired βL, by decreasing the PV panel area cost, the value of SAC based on LPSP decreases, and by reducing the hydrogen tank cost of the system by 46 %, the SAC of the system based on LPSP decreased by 39 %.

Algorithmic TCAMs: Implementing Packet Classification Algorithms in Hardware

The adoption of cloud computing and the deployment of new services require more and more computing and networking resources in large data centers. In particular, there is a need for faster, rich featured switches. Today, switching integrated circuits can handle more than 50 Tb/s and are expected to reach 100 Tb/s next year. This trend is likely to continue, approaching petabit capacities in a few years. At the same time, switches need to support more advanced packet classification features. This poses many challenges to the designers of switching integrated circuits, creating a need for innovations to move forward. One of those challenges is to support programmable packet classification with large rulesets at wire speed using limited silicon footprint. Unfortunately, traditional solutions like ternary content addressable memories (TCAMs) have high cost in area and power, and therefore are not a viable option for large on-chip rulesets, so new alternatives are needed. In the last two decades, researchers have extensively studied the problem of packet classification, proposing many algorithms based on standard memories, mostly targeting software implementations. These packet classification algorithms could be a solution to enable large on-chip classification rulesets using standard memories. However, porting the standard packet classification algorithms to a hardware implementation is not a trivial task, due to the different requirements and the different kinds of memory and computing resources available on application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) switching chips. This article describes a packet classification design tailored for high-speed switching integrated circuits, which is currently used in the NVIDIA® Mellanox® Spectrum® switching ASIC product line, illustrating how to solve the mismatch between the usual software-based classification algorithms and the specific requirements of a hardware implementation.

A Low-Power Area-Efficient Precision Scalable Multiplier with an Input Vector Systolic Structure

In this paper, a small-area low-power 64-bit integer multiplier is presented, which is suitable for portable devices or wireless applications. To save the area cost and power consumption, an input vector systolic (IVS) structure is proposed based on four 16-bit radix-8 Booth multipliers and a data input scheme is proposed to reduce the number of signal transitions. This structure is similar to a systolic array in matrix multiply units of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), but it reduces the number of processing elements by 3/4 concerning the same vector systolic accelerator in reference. The comparison results prove that the IVS multiplier reduces at least 61.9% of the area and 45.18% of the power over its counterparts. To increase the hardware resource utilization, a Transverse Carry Array (TCA) structure for Partial Products Accumulation (PPA) was designed by replacing the 32-bit adders with 3/17-bit adders in the 16-bit multipliers. The experiment results show that the optimization could lead to at least a 6.32% and 13.65% reduction in power consumption and area cost, respectively, compared to the standard 16-bit radix-8 Booth multiplier. In the end, the precise scale of the proposed IVS multiplier is discussed. Benefiting from the modular design, the IVS multiplier can be configured to support sixteen different kinds of multiplications at a step of 16 bits [16b, 32b, 48b, 64b] × [16b, 32b, 48b, 64b].

A Meta-analysis on the Effectiveness of Offsetting Strategies to Address Harm to Freshwater Fishes.

Offsetting aims to compensate for negative impacts due to authorized anthropogenic impacts associated with development. While anchored into legislation, residual or chronic impacts can occur after offset establishment. Advice and best practice on how to approach these impacts is rare. To address this, we reviewed 30 projects based on a systematic review and meta-analysis in freshwater ecosystems dealing with residual or long-term negative impacts to provide application advice for: habitat creation, habitat restoration, and biological and chemical manipulation. Project information was obtained through Boolean search terms and web-scraping. Habitat creation projects had a pooled effect size of 0.8 and offsetting ratios of 1:5 with high biomass increases of >140% compared to pre-establishment, associated with them. Habitat restoration projects targeted a wide range of species and communities with a pooled effect size of 0.66, offset ratios ranging from 1:1.2 to 1:4.6, and biomass increases generally > 100% compared to pre-restoration. Biological manipulation had the lowest effect size (0.51) with stocking being highly variable both in terms of biomass benefits and project outcomes pointing towards being mostly applicable in cases of direct fish harm not related to habitat aspects. We conclude that (1) all three assessed approaches have a potential application use for offsetting residual or chronic harm with approach-specific caveats. (2) Implementation costs differ across offset methods, with connectivity and side-channel projects having the lowest biomass gain per area costs (3) Time to first benefits required one to two years with time lags needing to be accounted for in the implementation and monitoring process.

Heat exchanger network optimisation considering different shell-side flow arrangements

Heat exchanger network synthesis (HENS) is an effective tool for heat recovery in chemical and petrochemical industries. This study aims to show a method for HENS with the consideration of different shell-side flow arrangements in shell-and-tube heat exchangers. The proposed MINLP model is modified from the stage-wise superstructure model, incorporating newly developed correlations for shell-side pressure drop calculation for the helical baffle. The objective is to minimise the total annual cost (TAC) with a trade-off between the cost of different shell-side heat exchangers, utility cost, and pumping cost. The selection of baffle design is decided by the saved pumping cost and the increased area cost. The proposed model is tested from different points of view: with/without utility constraints and different statuses of the streams. Three case studies are presented and compared with the results from the literature. The proposed method with different shell-side baffles can reduce the heat transfer area and pressure drop. For fixed utility consumptions, the TAC in a case study is decreased by 8.9% with mixed baffle types. Although the unit per area cost of the helical baffle is higher than the segmental baffle, the increased investment cost could be compensated by the reduced operation cost, especially for plants with high viscosity streams and long-term cost-saving.

Factors Affecting the Opinion of Rice Farmers in Pulau Hanaut District, Kab. East Waringin City

This study aims to determine how big the influence of land area, selling price, production results and production costs on rice farmers' income both simultaneously and partially. The population in this study were all rice farmers in Pulau Hanaut District, Kab. Kotawaringin Timur, which amounted to 184 farmers and which was only used as a sample, amounted to 126 respondents using a non-probability sampling technique. Sources of data in this study are primary data and secondary data. The process of data analysis using classical assumption test, multiple regression analysis and hypothesis testing with the help of SPSS. The results of the instrument test show that the variables of land area (X1), selling price (X2), production yield (X3), and production costs (X4) simultaneously have a significant and positive effect on the income level of rice farmers in Pulau Hanaut District, Kab. East Kotawaringin.

Faktor-Faktor yang Memengaruhi Keuntungan Usaha Tani Tembakau di Kecamatan Manisrenggo Kabupaten Klaten

<p><em>The agricultural sector, especially plantations, has entered the business world that considers profit in its activities. One of them is tobacco farming in Manisrenggo Sub-district, Klaten Regency. This study aims to determine the costs, revenues, income, and profits of tobacco farming, and what factors affect the profits of tobacco farming in Manisrenggo Sub-district, Klaten Regency. The method used in this research is descriptive analytical purposive location determination, and sampling using random sampling method. The data were analyzed by farming and multiple linear regression. The results showed that the average revenue from tobacco farming was IDR22,377,755.40 per planting period per ha, the total cost was IDR12,486,217.36 per planting period per ha, the income was IDR12,023,202.48 per planting period per ha, and the profit was IDR9,974,588.43 per planting period per ha. Factors that have a significant effect on the profits of tobacco farming are land area and production costs with positive coefficient values. The level of education has a negative and significant effect on the profits of tobacco farming.</em></p>

Modern OR management in tertiary care hospitals

Institutional operating room (OR) management is an established and indispensable component of organizational structures in most hospitals, independent of the level of care. In this role, OR management needs to consider both the high fixed costs of operation areas and the increased relevancy of generated revenue. Therefore, in the day to day operations, OR management strives to ensure reliable and safe patient care amidst efficient use of resources and high patient and employee satisfaction. Given these aims, proven strategies, such as constituting processes and responsibilities by OR statutes or tracking key figures and indicators of the OR, must be continuously supplemented and improved upon by OR management. In the future, OR management can derive innovative methods from adaptable capacity management, agile forms of collaboration, integrating upstream and downstream segments into OR management general process organization, and harnessing the potentials of artificial intelligence. Innovation in the face of these and other challenges contributes to improving long-term interdisciplinary and interprofessional collaboration in the OR and with the numerous adjacent teams.

Estimated cost of transporting construction and demolition waste in Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil

The construction sector has grown significantly in the last decade, also expanding the environmental damage inherent to the activity, especially the production of solid waste, with an annual estimate of over 760,000 tons for the municipality of Recife. Proper disposal of construction and demolition waste (RCD) should be technically and economically feasible, where the collection and disposal process results in an additional cost for any building work, and transportation is a relevant stage of this, where its value is determined by variables such as distance, traffic and access road conditions. This study aims to analyze the variation in the cost of transportation of RCD in Recife, starting with a survey of the destination points on the CPRH page, delimiting three coverage areas, and calculating the minimum mean transport distances (DMT). and maximum in the demarcated regions, being observed the variations of the DMTs in each area, through the Tukey test. As a price reference, the SINAPI table was used, calculating the minimum and maximum costs for each area. Finally, a considerable variation in the minimum cost was observed in one of the areas, while no relevant disparities in the maximum price were detected.

Delignified wood supported MIL-100 (Fe) for fast adsorption removal of tetracycline

Iron-based metal-organic framework (MIL-100) with intrinsic high surface area and low cost is extremely attractive in the field of organic pollutant remediation. Herein, delignified balsa wood is utilized as substrate/support for the in situ growth and dispersion of MIL-100 particles. Results demonstrate that the MIL-100 particles adhere tightly to the support and a hierarchal architecture is constructed. The MIL-100@Wood composite can be used as adsorbent and filter for the alleviation of organic contamination. With 25.4 wt% of MIL-100 loading, the MIL-100 decorated delignified wood (MD-Wood) exhibits a tetracycline (TC) adsorption capacity of 109.9 mg/g. The composite MD-Wood can be easily fabricated into an all-in-one filter and this filter presents an effective treatable volume of 1100 mL of TC solution (20 mg/L). The MD-Wood is further deposited with Ag particles and the Ag@MD-Wood can be directly applied for the flow catalytic reduction of 4-nitrophenol. Moreover, the composite woods are facile to regenerate and possess superior reusability and stability.

THE EFFECT OF SMOKING BEHAVIOR ON HEALTH EXPENDITURE IN INDONESIA’S RURAL AREAS

Smoking is one of the biggest causes of death in the world. The WHO reported that smoking kills 8 million people each year. Besides threatening global health, smoking by rural people tends to detain poverty alleviation efforts due to several factors, including cigarette expenditures and health expenditures. Indonesia has one of the most significant worldwide smoking prevalence and has become one of the countries that most suffer from smoking. The MoH Indonesia reported that health costs due to smoking reached Rp596.61 trillion in 2015. Previous studies found that smoking caused an increase in health expenditure due to smoking-related diseases in Indonesia. However, there is a lack of evidence found in rural areas. This research aims to answer whether smoking affects health expenditure in rural areas. Robust regression analysis is used in this model and processed by STATA 14 application. Using IFLS 5 data, the analysis shows that cigarettes consumed in rural areas have a positive and significant effect on outpatient costs. Increased outpatient costs in rural areas due to smoking will make the rural economy suffer and escalate poverty. The government should intensify the tobacco control policy in rural areas to avoid an increase of poverty rate in Indonesia.

Reconfigurable Turbo and Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) Decoding Accelerators for Powerline Communications

This study presents two reconfigurable turbo/low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoding kernels for the two powerline communication standards, HomePlug and G.hn. Two architectures are presented, both of which use the radix-4 double-binary enhanced max-log maximum a posteriori probability algorithm with next-iteration initialization in turbo decoding. In LDPC decoding, the two architectures employ the normalized min-sum and the layered radix-4 forward and backward algorithms. The two algorithms cause differences in the architecture and throughput rate. Consequently, the proposed decoding kernels have different architectures when combined with the turbo decoding algorithm, and the two proposed decoding kernels each have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of throughput and area cost. To make the features of two kernels more evident, we have implemented the proposed decoding kernels that lead to significant throughput gains and better area efficiency compared with other studies. The proposed decoding kernels can be operated in all modes specified in the HomePlug and G.hn standards using a 40-nm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process. Moreover, the proposed decoding kernels provide different solutions to achieve the expected throughput rates of the G.hn and HomePlug standards.

Efficiency of Priority Queue Architectures in FPGA

This paper presents a novel SRAM-based architecture of a data structure that represents a set of multiple priority queues that can be implemented in FPGA or ASIC. The proposed architecture is based on shift registers, systolic arrays and SRAM memories. Such architecture, called MultiQueue, is optimized for minimum chip area costs, which leads to lower energy consumption too. The MultiQueue architecture has constant time complexity, constant critical path length and constant latency. Therefore, it is highly predictable and very suitable for real-time systems too. The proposed architecture was verified using a simplified version of UVM and applying millions of instructions with randomly generated input values. Achieved FPGA synthesis results are presented and discussed. These results show significant savings in FPGA Look-Up Tables consumption in comparison to existing solutions. More than 63% of Look-Up Tables can be saved using the MultiQueue architecture instead of the existing priority queues.