Artificial Phenomena Research Articles

The carbonation and chloride penetration along highway concrete structures in a South alpine space

Reinforced concrete structures are subjected to atmospheric agents during time. The cyclic exposure to natural parameters such as temperature, wind, rain and snowfall may emphasize the detrimental effect on structures. The different types of infrastructure may also be exposed to artificial phenomena such as, salt spreading, splashing of salt containing water or leaching effects. These phenomena contribute to the degradation of cementitious material, and the main induced mechanisms are carbonation and chloride ingress into the structures. Many types of structure such as tunnels, underpasses, walls, bridges and manholes have been investigated along a 11 km long highway close to the Alps in their South part. The aim of the study was to clarify the extent of carbonation and chloride ingress, as well as their relationship over a 40 year period. The mean climatic parameters were also registered over the years. Generally, the structures exhibited a different behaviour. The carbonation was maximal in tunnels and underpasses. A generalyl high chloride content was found for all artefacts, well beyond the 0.025 % referred to the concrete mass up to 0.400 %. The tunnels exhibited both high mean carbonation and chloride content, while all other structures indicated a slight correlation between high chloride content and low carbonation. These latter parameters were also influenced by processes such as leaching, splashing and indirect exposure to the degrading agents

Qualitative and Quantitative Examples of Natural and Artificial Phenomena

The dichotomy between the qualitative and the quantitative has been a classic throughout the history of science. As will be seen, this dichotomy permeates all ontological levels of reality. In this work, phenomenological examples potentially related to semiosis are presented at the different levels established by Mario Bunge and Josep Ferrater Mora, contrasting the qualitative categorizations with the quantifiable physical reality. Likewise, the need to continue in the quantification of the biosemiotic and linguistic studies will be presented, while, in contrast, the need to establish a qualitative framework in the little-addressed study of technosemiotics will be raised, of potential interest given the notable advances that are expected in communication systems for inert artifacts in the next years. In short, in the thesis defended here the qualitative precedes the quantitative in the defining path of science.

Visual analytics of COVID-19 dissemination in São Paulo state, Brazil

Visual analytics techniques are useful tools to support decision-making and cope with increasing data, particularly to monitor natural or artificial phenomena. When monitoring disease progression, visual analytics approaches help decision-makers to understand or even prevent dissemination paths. In this paper, we propose a new visual analytics tool for monitoring COVID-19 dissemination. We use k-nearest neighbors of cities to mimic neighboring cities and analyze COVID-19 dissemination based on comparing a city under consideration and its neighborhood. Moreover, such analysis is performed within periods, which facilitates the assessment of isolation policies. We validate our tool by analyzing the progression of COVID-19 in neighboring cities of São Paulo state, Brazil.

A Review of Fractional Order Entropies.

Fractional calculus (FC) is the area of calculus that generalizes the operations of differentiation and integration. FC operators are non-local and capture the history of dynamical effects present in many natural and artificial phenomena. Entropy is a measure of uncertainty, diversity and randomness often adopted for characterizing complex dynamical systems. Stemming from the synergies between the two areas, this paper reviews the concept of entropy in the framework of FC. Several new entropy definitions have been proposed in recent decades, expanding the scope of applicability of this seminal tool. However, FC is not yet well disseminated in the community of entropy. Therefore, new definitions based on FC can generalize both concepts in the theoretical and applied points of view. The time to come will prove to what extend the new formulations will be useful.

Influence of Hyperfine Coupling Strain on Two-Dimensional ESEEM Spectra from I = 1/2 Nuclei

HYSCORE, a variant of two-dimensional ESEEM spectroscopy, is currently one of the most effective tools in high-resolution solid-state EPR spectroscopy. Our systematic studies of hydrogen bonds with semiquinones in 15N-labeled proteins have previously provided us with an extensive collection of 15N HYSCORE spectra produced by N–H…O nitrogen donors. Examination of these spectra has indicated in several cases lineshape distortions not described by available theoretical models. We were able to explain all observed artificial phenomena in the 15N spectra of semiquinones considering a single mechanism—strain of the isotropic hyperfine interaction. In this review article, we introduce the HYSCORE experiment and the theoretical background for spectra of I = 1/2 nuclei in orientation-disordered samples. We then present a description of the observed lineshape distortions and an explanation of the hyperfine strain’s influence on the experimental spectra. In the final part of the article, we discuss (i) similar lineshape distortions found in previously published spectra from 15N, 29Si, 31P, and 57Fe nuclei that can be explained using the approach applied for the analysis of the 15N spectra of semiquinones, and (ii) a recently published analysis of 31P spectra with a different type of lineshape distortion based on a more sophisticated method, where the strength of anisotropic coupling is correlated with the sign and value of the isotropic constant in different conformations of a Cu(II) complex.

МЕТОДОЛОГІЧНІ ОРІЄНТАЦІЇ У ДОСЛІДЖЕННІ ПРОБЛЕМ ОСОБИСТОСТІ

У статті аналізуються завдання методологічної рефлексії у сфері персонології, спрямованої на методологічну оцінку психологічних теорій та стану і завдання психологічної практики, вплив загаль­но­цивілізаційних тенденцій та внутрішній світ людини та її екзистенційні домінанти на сучасному етапі. Сформульовано завдання психології у напрямі вирішення проблем вдосконалення сучасного світу, попе­ре­дження проблем у розвитку особистості. Констатується відставання сучасної психології у дослідженні проблем персонології, яка часто пропонує неоптимальні шляхи їх вирішення, не враховує реальну онтологію людини, дається оцінка сучасній наративній психології. Акцентується увага на проблемі змісту внутріш­ньо­го світу людини, необхідність врахування її духовного Я, незорієнтованості психологічної науки на з’я­су­вання характеристик здорової особистості та оволодіння нею здоровим способом життя, з’ясуванні співвідношення індивідуального та спільнотного у природі людини, на проблемі поєднання життя людини в реальному та віртуальному світах, взаємодії з феноменами штучного інтелекту, ставиться завдання ство­рення нових методів вивчення особистості, з’ясування змісту та організації фахової психологічної освіти та аналізу досягнень української психологічної науки. Акцентується увага на необхідності вклю­чен­ня етичної проблематики в предмет психологічної науки, проблеми методологічної орієнтації персонолога та професійної відповідальності практичного психолога, вказується на деструктивні моменти у прак­тичній реалізації психологічного знання.

Analysis of predictor equations for determining the blast-induced vibration in rock blasting

The paper proposes a new empirical correlation designed to complement the “site laws” currently used to evaluate the attenuation in the rock masses of vibrations induced by rock blasting. The formula contains a deformed exponential known as the K-exponential, which seems to well represent a large number of both natural and artificial phenomena ranging from astrophysics to quantum mechanics, with some extension in the field of economics and finance. Experimental validation of the formula was performed via the analysis of vibration data covering a number of case studies, which differed in terms of both operation and rock type. A total of 12 experimental cases were analysed and the proposed formulation exhibited a good performance in 11 of them. In particular, the proposed law, which was built using blast test data, produced very good approximations of the points representing the vibration measurements and would thus be useful in organising production blasts. However, the developed formula was found to work less well when a correlation obtained for a given site was applied to another presenting similar types of rocks and operations, and thus should not be employed in the absence of measurements from test data.

QUANTUM INFORMATICS: OVERVIEW OF THE MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS

The urgency of conducting research in the field of quantum informatics is grounded. Promising areas of research are highlighted. For foreign and Russian publications and materials, a review of the main scientific results that characterize the current state of research in quantum computer science is made. It is noted that knowledge and funds are invested most intensively in the development of the architecture of a quantum computer and its elements. Despite the fact that today there is no information on the creation of a physical implementation of a quantum computer comparable in functionality to a classical digital computer, the development of quantum algorithms is one of the popular areas of research. An advantage of quantum algorithms is the fact that they reduce the time required to solve the problem due to the parallelization of operations by generating entangled quantum states and their subsequent use. This advantage (quantum acceleration) is most important when solving the problem of modeling the dynamics of complex systems and enumerated mathematical problems. (The general case of enumeration is the Grover scheme and its variants; the tasks of searching for hidden periods: Shor's scheme of using the fast quantum Fourier transform and its analogues.) The demand for cybersecurity developments (search for vulnerabilities in smart spaces, secure storage and use of big data, quantum cryptography) is noted. More than a dozen articles are devoted to quantum algorithms of key search, key distribution on optical fibers of various lengths, and the analysis of quantum resources necessary for conducting a cyber attack. In the field of artificial quantum intelligence, attention is paid, first of all, to the “search” for a model of a quantum neural network that is optimal from the point of view of using all the advantages presented by quantum computing and neural networks, as well as machine learning algorithms. Examples of the use of quantum computing in cognitive and social sciences for studying the decision-making mechanism with incomplete data are given. It is concluded that quantum informatics is promising for the simulation of complex natural and artificial phenomena and processes.

Application of the region–time–length algorithm to study of earthquake precursors in the Thailand–Laos–Myanmar borders

In order to examine the precursory seismic quiescence of upcoming hazardous earthquakes, the seismicity data available in the vicinity of the Thailand–Laos–Myanmar borders was analyzed using the Region–Time–Length (RTL) algorithm based statistical technique. The utilized earthquake data were obtained from the International Seismological Centre. Thereafter, the homogeneity and completeness of the catalogue were improved. After performing iterative tests with different values of the \(r_{0}\) and \(t_{0}\) parameters, those of \(r_{0}\) = 120 km and \(t_{0}\) = 2 yr yielded reasonable estimates of the anomalous RTL scores, in both temporal variation and spatial distribution, of a few years prior to five out of eight strong-to-major recognized earthquakes. Statistical evaluation of both the correlation coefficient and stochastic process for the RTL were checked and revealed that the RTL score obtained here excluded artificial or random phenomena. Therefore, the prospective earthquake sources mentioned here should be recognized and effective mitigation plans should be provided.

Observation of Dirac bands in artificial graphene in small-period nanopatterned GaAs quantum wells.

Charge carriers in graphene behave like massless Dirac fermions (MDFs) with linear energy-momentum dispersion 1, 2 , providing a condensed-matter platform for studying quasiparticles with relativistic-like features. Artificial graphene (AG)-a structure with an artificial honeycomb lattice-exhibits novel phenomena due to the tunable interplay between topology and quasiparticle interactions 3-6 . So far, the emergence of a Dirac band structure supporting MDFs has been observed in AG using molecular 5 , atomic 6, 7 and photonic systems 8-10 , including those with semiconductor microcavities 11 . Here, we report the realization of an AG that has a band structure with vanishing density of states consistent with the presence of MDFs. This observation is enabled by a very small lattice constant (a = 50 nm) of the nanofabricated AG patterns superimposed on a two-dimensional electron gas hosted by a high-quality GaAs quantum well. Resonant inelastic light-scattering spectra reveal low-lying transitions that are not present in the unpatterned GaAs quantum well. These excitations reveal the energy dependence of the joint density of states for AG band transitions. Fermi level tuning through the Dirac point results in a collapse of the density of states at low transition energy, suggesting the emergence of the MDF linear dispersion in the AG.

Why security and privacy research lies at the centre of the information systems (IS) artefact: proposing a bold research agenda

In this essay, we outline some important concerns in the hope of improving the effectiveness of security and privacy research. We discuss the need to re-examine our understanding of information technology and information system (IS) artefacts and to expand the range of the latter to include those artificial phenomena that are crucial to information security and privacy research. We then briefly discuss some prevalent limitations in theory, methodology, and contributions that generally weaken security/privacy studies and jeopardise their chances of publication in a top IS journal. More importantly, we suggest remedies for these weaknesses, identifying specific improvements that can be made and offering a couple of illustrations of such improvements. In particular, we address the notion of loose re-contextualisation, using deterrence theory research as an example. We also provide an illustration of how the focus on intentions may have resulted in an underuse of powerful theories in security and privacy research, because such theories explain more than just intentions. We then outline three promising opportunities for IS research that should be particularly compelling to security and privacy researchers: online platforms, the Internet of things, and big data. All of these carry innate information security and privacy risks and vulnerabilities that can be addressed only by researching each link of the systems chain, that is, technologies–policies–processes–people–society–economy–legislature. We conclude by suggesting several specific opportunities for new research in these areas.

自然的自然の研究から人為的自然(歴史的自然)の研究へ

自然的自然の研究から人為的自然(歴史的自然)の研究へ

Introduction to Control Systems Design Using Matlab

Control systems theory is a wide area covering a range of artificial and physical phenomena. Control systems are systems that are designed to operate under strict specifications, to satisfy certain aims, like safety regulations in the industry, optimal production of goods, disturbance rejection in vehicles, smooth movement and placement of objects in warehousing, regulation of drug administration in medical operations, level control in chemical processes and many more. The present work provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of control system's analysis and design through the programming environment of Matlab and Simulink. Analysis of transfer function models is carried out though multiple examples in Matlab and Simulink, analyzing the dynamics of 1st and 2nd order systems, the role of the poles and zeros in the system's dynamic response, the effects of delay and the possibility to approximate higher order systems by lower order ones. In addition, examples are given from the fields of mechanical systems, medically induced anesthesia, neuroprosthetics and water level control, showcasing the use of controllers that satisfy certain design specifications.

PENGARUH FAKTOR BERMUKIM MASYARAKAT TERHADAP POLA PERSEBARAN PERMUKIMAN DI KAWASAN RAWAN BENCANA LONGSOR KABUPATEN MAGETAN

<em>Housing and settlements is fundamental human need to do daily activities for the survival of mankind. The community in determining the location of settlements have basic considerations that affect them in choosing a location for a settlement. The basic consideration is composed of several factors, including accessibility, environment, job opportunities, level of service, in addition to psychological factors, socioeconomic factors and historical cultural factors. Basically the location of settlements or housing are not allowed on the mountain slopes are potentially landslide disaster. Landslide that is threatening the survival of human beings who lived in the area. The danger of a disaster is a natural or artificial phenomena which have the potential to threaten human life, loss of property and damage to the environment. The area of the slopes of Mount Lawu which has a dense contour and topography make settlement patterns that are located in the area most are clumped as well as the distance between one another with their distance. There are several factors that affect the formation of settlement patterns, namely economic, cultural, institutional and customs. The issue of this study is to examine how the influence factors of settlement in the area of landslide-prone Magetan against pattern of settlement that is formed in the area. This study discusses the characteristics of the factor pattern of distribution in the community, the establishment of settlements and the influence factors of settlement against the spread pattern of settlement in the area of the landslide-prone Magetan by using multiple linear regression analysis. The community has its own considerations against the selection of the location of the settlement which made slopes be settled and be against the formation of settlement patterns in the Poncol Districts and Plaosan Districts which located on the slopes of Mount Lawu. Of research results obtained in the area of community based factors prone to landslide has no influence on the pattern of the spread of settlements that was formed in the area.</em>

On the effect of human mobility to the design of metropolitan mobile opportunistic networks of sensors

We live in a world where demand for monitoring natural and artificial phenomena is growing. The practical importance of Sensor Networks is continuously increasing in our society due to their broad applicability to tasks such as traffic and air-pollution monitoring, forest-fire detection, agriculture, and battlefield communication. Furthermore, we have seen the emergence of sensor technology being integrated in everyday objects such as cars, traffic lights, bicycles, phones, and even being attached to living beings such as dolphins, trees, and humans. The consequence of this widespread use of sensors is that new sensor network infrastructures may be built out of static (e.g., traffic lights) and mobile nodes (e.g., mobile phones, cars). The use of smart devices carried by people in sensor network infrastructures creates a new paradigm we refer to as Social Networks of Sensors (SNoS). This kind of opportunistic network may be fruitful and economically advantageous where the connectivity, the performance, of the scalability provided by cellular networks fail to provide an adequate quality of service. This paper delves into the issue of understanding the impact of human mobility patterns to the performance of sensor network infrastructures with respect to four different metrics, namely: detection time, report time, data delivery rate, and network coverage area ratio. Moreover, we evaluate the impact of several other mobility patterns (in addition to human mobility) to the performance of these sensor networks on the four metrics above. Finally, we propose possible improvements to the design of sensor network infrastructures.

Empirical Laws and Foreseeing the Future of Technological Progress

The Moore’s law (ML) is one of many empirical expressions that is used to characterize natural and artificial phenomena. The ML addresses technological progress and is expected to predict future trends. Yet, the “art” of predicting is often confused with the accurate fitting of trendlines to past events. Presently, data-series of multiple sources are available for scientific and computational processing. The data can be described by means of mathematical expressions that, in some cases, follow simple expressions and empirical laws. However, the extrapolation toward the future is considered with skepticism by the scientific community, particularly in the case of phenomena involving complex behavior. This paper addresses these issues in the light of entropy and pseudo-state space. The statistical and dynamical techniques lead to a more assertive perspective on the adoption of a given candidate law.

Remote sensing of urban growth and landscape pattern changes in response to the expansion of Chongming Island in Shanghai, China

Chongming Island in China is currently undergoing a rapid urbanization and an increasing environmental pressure due to its fast-paced social economic development. Owing to natural silts deposit phenomenon as well as artificial land reclamation practices, the Island is also experiencing an expansion phenomenon. The synergy between these natural and artificial phenomena results in a rapidly changing landscape on Chongming Island. Consequently, the tools and methods for a rapid and cost-effective detection and assessment of related issues are urgently needed to ensure a harmonious and sustainable development of the Island. We herein investigate the urban growth and the landscape pattern change in relation to the Island’s expansion phenomenon and the associated complexity of land use/cover change. Our investigation is based on a time series of Landsat satellite images spanning the past 34 years. The methodological approach adopted in the present study combines vegetation indices, images textural features and social statistics data in an object-oriented classification framework. With Chongming Island expanding by an annual rate of 0.9% between 1979 and 2013, we found that the proportion of vegetation area to the total area decreased from 71 to 45%, whereas the proportion of built-up area to the total area increased from 5 to 19.9%. The urban area expanded about six times from 1979 to 2013, and during the same period, the Island’s population did not change significantly. The urban spatial expansion of Chongming Island caused distinct expansion intensity index for each intervals, and significant fragmentation and diversity in the landscape pattern between 1979 and 2013. It was also found that the rapid urbanization process took place at the expense of landscape pattern changes at any time within the study period. This is a strong indication that besides the natural geographic element, economic development and policy orientation were the dominant driving factors. If the current rate of urban expansion is to be maintained and the vegetation cover is to keep decreasing at an annual rate of 0.1% (period 1979–2013), their combined effects would profoundly alter the ecological environment in the long term. These findings provide a basic objective and scientific information for knowledgeable decision-making and policy formulation regarding regional planning and management to ensure harmonious transition of Chongming towards ecologically oriented development.

ELF帯環境電磁界観測信号の背景信号推定における準L1ノルムに基づく非負値行列因子分解アルゴリズムの有用性

Our research group has been measuring Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) magnetic fields across Japan. The ELF measurements are mixtures of signals associated with various natural or artificial phenomena. When focus on specific factor, the signals related to other factors distort analysis result. In order to get specific information accurately, we should estimate desired signals or eliminate undesired signals. We found that Image Space Reconstruction Algorithm (ISRA), one of the Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) algorithm, works better than independent component analysis to estimate the ELF background signal. However, ISRA sometimes failed to estimate the weight vector for the background signal. We considered that ISRA has weakness for outliers and sparse signals because ISRA is based on minimizing L2 (Frobenius) norm between input matrix and projected matrix from estimated matrices. In order to improve robustness, we developed new methods based on minimizing quasi-L1 norm (QL1-NMF). In the experiment using generated signals and ELF observed signals which had outliers, the proposed method estimate background signal more accurately than ISRA and other L1 norm based algorithms.

Clasificador no supervisado para series de tiempo

A time series is a sequence of numerical data describing natural and/or artificial phenomena, therefore its analysis is of great interest in various areas of knowledge, being very useful in industrial, social and scientific development. An alternative for the analysis of time series is presented in classification techniques that allow the creation of groups of similar characteristics, however, there is a lot of phenomena in real life that do not have a prior or established classification, therefore supervised classifiers cannot be applied in such problems. This is why unsupervised classification approach arises, which allow us creating groups from a given set of data without any prior knowledge. In this work a methodology is proposed that allows the unsupervised classification of a set of time series using an unsupervised approach. This method consists of two stages: first, it was designed twelve different search techniques to find representative time series and second, an

Техническая и техногенная реальность современного социоприродного развития в трансформации биосферной жизни

Technical reality is a set technical and technological objects and processes. This reality widens recently up to the world of material and artificial objects, phenomena and processes, oversteps the limits of techniques and approaches the concept of technosphere. This extensive concept itself includes the whole of artificial, lifeless, realmaterial and field, electromagnetic world. At the beginning of the XXI-st to change a technical reality began a more complicated reality. It is already different - extranatural, extrabiospheric, not neutral to biosophere and its animate nature, but transforming or even destroying a secular biospheric life. The formed in the paper new concept –“mancaused”, on the one hand, includes technical reality giving a new life not only to man, but also to terrestrial life precipitating not only processes of social development, but also socionatural one. On the other hand such a reality correlates with biosphere and human life in a different way – subjects it to pathological transformations and, as a result, to annihilation. It is necessary to investigate in a system way the formation of a mancaused reality by various institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and also to create a United Institute of Prospective Regional Development in Bryansk State Technical University on basis of scientificphilosophical school for researches of integrated socialtechnonatural processes of life development.