Auxiliary Mechanism Research Articles

СУЧАСНІ ОБРИСИ МЕНЕДЖМЕНТУ Й АДМІНІСТРУВАННЯ КУЛЬТУРНОЇ СФЕРИ УКРАЇНИ

The cultural sphere as a generator of social development, economic and political potential of a state, its status and relations within international arena requires rapid and qualitative changes in the system of public administration. Three spheres of state sovereignty - political, economic and cultural - are called timeless and important. The identified problems and factors of their crisis state actualize a need to modernize the state management system in terms of functional, resource, legal and communicative support. A requirement to improve quality and efficiency of public management and administration, its publicity and effectiveness at all levels of the system is caused by the following conditions: low quality of services of the bureaucratic apparatus; society's distrust of the government due to ineffectiveness of its decisions, and in some cases - inaction, corruption and bureaucracy; initial stages of decentralization and partnership development between the state in person of government officials and society, business and local authorities. A structural and functional model of management entities that influence and determine the policy and state of a cultural sphere has been developed. The weight of each subject of management system in terms of their functions and tasks is significant, nevertheless current market environment highlights a need for their joint participation in solving industry problems. It is proved that to ensure a development of cultural sphere introduction of public-private partnership as a tool to support culture among existing mechanisms of country's modernization is relevant. Partnership involving public authorities (legislative, executive and judicial branches), local governments, civil society and business is aimed at long-term mutually beneficial cooperation, agreed by the parties taking into account the size and weight of power, influence of parties, resources, experience, competencies and subordination, risk sharing etc. in order to implement socially significant projects, ensuring economic benefits of all participants. An auxiliary mechanism for attracting additional resources, sharing functions, responsibilities and risks, exchange and sharing of experiences and knowledge are not yet decisive benefits of such partnership.

Microembolus clearance through angiophagy is an auxiliary mechanism preserving tissue perfusion in the rat brain

Considering its intolerance to ischemia, it is of critical importance for the brain to efficiently process microvascular occlusions and maintain tissue perfusion. In addition to collateral microvascular flow and enzymatic degradation of emboli, the endothelium has the potential to engulf microparticles and thereby recanalize the vessel, through a process called angiophagy. Here, we set out to study the dynamics of angiophagy in relation to cytoskeletal remodeling in vitro and reperfusion in vivo. We show that polystyrene microspheres and fibrin clots are actively taken up by (brain) endothelial cells in vitro, and chart the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton during this process using live cell imaging. Whereas microspheres were taken up through the formation of a cup structure by the apical endothelial membrane, fibrin clots were completely engulfed by the cells, marked by dense F-actin accumulation surrounding the clot. Both microspheres and fibrin clots were retained in the endothelial cells. Notably, fibrin clots were not degraded intracellularly. Using an in vivo microembolization rat model, in which microparticles are injected into the common carotid artery, we found that microspheres are transported by the endothelium from the microvasculature into the brain parenchyma. Microembolization with microspheres caused temporal opening of the blood–brain barrier and vascular nonperfusion, followed by microsphere extravasation and restoration of vessel perfusion over time. Taken together, angiophagy is accompanied by active cytoskeletal remodeling of the endothelium, and is an effective mechanism to restore perfusion of the occluded microvasculature in vivo.

Responsible Sourcing Under Supplier-Auditor Collusion

Problem definition: Although they enjoy low costs in sourcing from emerging economies, global brands also face serious brand and reputation risks from their suppliers’ noncompliance with environmental and labor standards. Such a supplier problem can be viewed as a process quality problem concerning how products are sourced and produced. Academic/practical relevance: Addressing this problem is a key component of many global companies’ responsible sourcing programs. A common approach is to use an audit as an auxiliary supplier screening mechanism. However, in regions with lax law enforcement, an unethical, noncomplying supplier may attempt to bribe an unethical auditor to pass the audit. Such supplier-auditor collusion compromises the integrity of the audit and weakens its effectiveness. Methodology: In this paper, we develop a game-theoretical model to study the effect of supplier-auditor collusion on the buyer’s auditing and contracting strategy in responsible sourcing, as well as various driving factors that help reduce collusion. Results: We show that the buyer’s equilibrium contracting strategy is a shutout contract that takes three different forms, depending on the collusion risk level. We also define and analyze the screening errors and social efficiency loss caused by supplier-auditor collusion. By comparing the cost versus collusion elimination trade-off between a third-party audit and an in-house audit, we offer explanations for why many global brands fully rely on third-party audits and set higher process quality requirements for suppliers located in high-risk countries. The robustness of our insights is verified by two model extensions: one involving additional supplier audit cost and the other allowing for supplier process quality improvement before audit. Managerial implications: These model insights provide useful theoretical support and baseline guidance for the current supplier audit practices in responsible sourcing. Our extended model analysis further demonstrates the importance for global brands to lobby local governments to increase collusion penalties and to promote the ethical level of the third-party auditors located in high-risk countries.

Predictions of core plasma performance for the SPARC tokamak

SPARC is designed to be a high-field, medium-size tokamak aimed at achieving net energy gain with ion cyclotron range-of-frequencies (ICRF) as its primary auxiliary heating mechanism. Empirical predictions with conservative physics indicate that SPARC baseline plasmas would reach$Q\approx 11$, which is well above its mission objective of$Q>2$. To build confidence that SPARC will be successful, physics-based integrated modelling has also been performed. The TRANSP code coupled with the theory-based trapped gyro-Landau fluid (TGLF) turbulence model and EPED predictions for pedestal stability find that$Q\approx 9$is attainable in standard H-mode operation and confirms$Q > 2$operation is feasible even with adverse assumptions. In this analysis, ion cyclotron waves are simulated with the full wave TORIC code and alpha heating is modelled with the Monte–Carlo fast ion NUBEAM module. Detailed analysis of expected turbulence regimes with linear and nonlinear CGYRO simulations is also presented, demonstrating that profile predictions with the TGLF reduced model are in reasonable agreement.

Analysis of the drop dynamics of control rod assembly in a LBE-cooled research reactor

The lead-based fast reactor is very attractive as one of the Generation-IV nuclear energy systems due to high-power density, heavy liquid metal coolants with a high boiling point as well as harmless interaction with air or water. Nuclear heat is generated from very high neutron flux that is regulated and controlled by the drop of the Control Rods (CRs) for safe operation. The resisting effect of the Lead Bismuth Eutectic (LBE) due to high density on the driving force of the CR Assembly (CRA) during the fall is crucial, which some delays may lead to unavoidable accidents. The mathematical approach has been applied to investigate the CRA dynamics of lead-based research reactor. The non-linear differential equations governing the motion of the CRA as well as the LBE flow have been ascertained to capture the pertinent parameters. Using the Fourth-Order Runge-Kutta iteration method, a computer program was developed with MATLAB and it can be used to calculate the drop time of the CRA and other important parameters described and presented in the study. Compared with the results of the experiment in the available literature, the program developed was proved to be applicable and reliable. The results showed that among the LBE flow characteristics, the density is the most influential parameter on the drop time and tends to have a positive relationship with the drop time. The total CRA mass contributes to the driving force of the CRA to reduce drop time when increased. Finally, the result of the theoretical model will serve as a basis to analyse the auxiliary mechanism and thus, help make informed choice on LBE flow parameters during modification to improve safety.

A Cross-Reference Line Method Based Multiobjective Evolutionary Algorithm to Enhance Population Diversity.

Multiobjective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs) with higher population diversity have been extensively presented in literature studies and shown great potential in the approximate Pareto front (PF). Especially, in the recent development of MOEAs, the reference line method is increasingly favored due to its diversity enhancement nature and auxiliary selection mechanism based on the uniformly distributed reference line. However, the existing reference line method ignores the nadir point and consequently causes the Pareto incompatibility problem, which makes the algorithm convergence worse. To address this issue, a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on the adaptive cross-reference line method, called MOEA-CRL, is proposed under the framework of the indicator-based MOEAs. Based on the dominant penalty distance (DPD) indicator, the cross-reference line method can not only solve the Pareto incompatibility problem but also enhance the population diversity on the convex PF and improve the performances of MOEA-CRL for irregular PF. In addition, the MOEA-CRL adjusts the distribution of the cross-reference lines directly defined by the DPD indicator according to the contributing solutions. Therefore, the adaptation of cross-reference lines will not be affected by the population size and the uniform distribution of cross-reference lines can be maintained. The MOEA-CRL is examined and compared with other MOEAs on several benchmark problems. The experimental results show that the MOEA-CRL is superior to several advanced MOEAs, especially on the convex PF. The MOEA-CRL exhibits the flexibility in population size setting and the great versatility in various multiobjective optimization problems (MOPs) and many-objective optimization problems (MaOPs).

COVID-19 and comorbidities: A role for dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4) in disease severity?

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by a novel betacoronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), similar to SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS-CoV), which cause acute respiratory distress syndrome and case fatalities. COVID-19 disease severity is worse in older obese patients with comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and chronic lung disease. Cell binding and entry of betacoronaviruses is via their surface spike glycoprotein; SARS-CoV binds to the metalloprotease angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), MERS-CoV utilizes dipeptidyl peptidase 4 (DPP4), and recent modeling of the structure of SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein predicts that it can interact with human DPP4 in addition to ACE2. DPP4 is a ubiquitous membrane-bound aminopeptidase that circulates in plasma; it is multifunctional with roles in nutrition, metabolism, and immune and endocrine systems. DPP4 activity differentially regulates glucose homeostasis and inflammation via its enzymatic activity and nonenzymatic immunomodulatory effects. The importance of DPP4 for the medical community has been highlighted by the approval of DPP4 inhibitors, or gliptins, for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. This review discusses the dysregulation of DPP4 in COVID-19 comorbid conditions; DPP4 activity is higher in older individuals and increased plasma DPP4 is a predictor of the onset of metabolic syndrome. DPP4 upregulation may be a determinant of COVID-19 disease severity, which creates interest regarding the use of gliptins in management of COVID-19. Also, knowledge of the chemistry and biology of DPP4 could be utilized to develop novel therapies to block viral entry of some betacoronaviruses, potentially including SARS-CoV-2.

A new fuzzy strategy for size and topology optimization of truss structures

Most of the metaheuristic optimization techniques are the general optimization tools with the ability of solving various class of problems. However, in the case of more complex engineering problems, adding extra customizing procedure(s) can improve their performance. In this regard, the current study deals with introducing a new auxiliary fuzzy decision mechanism to enhance these methods’ capability on handling the structural size and topology optimization problems. The proposed mechanism aims to reduce the complexity level of the structural size and topology optimization problems by converting their complex search spaces into simpler fuzzy domains. Introduced fuzzy mechanism, during the optimization process, permanently monitors the population updating process and emphasizes either size or topology search behavior of each agent. Proposed mechanism evaluates agents via two predefined concepts so-called Normalized Objective Function (NOFi) and Normalized Members Density (NMDi). Since the presented fuzzy strategy designed as an independent regulator module, it can be integrated with different optimization algorithms. In the current work, it is combined with the Interactive Search Algorithm (ISA) optimization method and the compound method is named as Fuzzy Tuned Interactive Search Algorithm (FTISA). Eventually, its performance is comparatively assessed on solving a number of structural size and topology optimization problems with dynamic and static constraints. Achieved results demonstrate that the introduced fuzzy strategy not only significantly enhances the computational cost of the process but also improves the accuracy of the solutions and stability of the algorithm.

Numerical and experimental studies of a flat acoustic source that is actuated by an integrated flexure-based piezoelectric mechanism

This paper focuses on extensive numerical and experimental investigations of a thin sandwich acoustic source. Due to an energy inefficient actuation design, a thin sandwich acoustic source that was proposed in an early study is redesigned and reconstructed in the current research. The thin acoustic source in the present paper is actuated by long piezoelectric stack actuators that are integrated with an auxiliary flexural mechanism. With the aid of the proposed actuation mechanism, the acoustic source is sufficiently thin and can be employed in applications with limited build space. Simplified equivalent parameters are used in a fully-coupled Finite Element (FE) model of the complete thin acoustic source to numerically model the involved physics. An experimental investigation validates the fully-coupled FE model. The obtained results show that there is good agreement between the numerical and experimental studies with an overall error of less than 23%. In particular, the investigation shows that there is very good agreement between the numerical model and the measurement results in the low frequency range up to the fundamental resonance of the thin acoustic source.

Characterization of a new smog chamber for evaluating SAPRC gas-phase chemical mechanism

A new state-of-the-art indoor smog chamber facility (CAPS-ZJU) has been constructed and characterized at Zhejiang University, which is designed for chemical mechanism evaluation under well-controlled conditions. A series of characterization experiments were performed to validate the well-established experimental protocols, including temperature variation pattern, light spectrum and equivalent intensity (JNO2), injection and mixing performance, as well as gases and particle wall loss. In addition, based on some characterization experiments, the auxiliary wall mechanism has been setup and examined. Fifty chamber experiments were performed across a broad range of experimental scenarios, and we demonstrated the ability to utilize these chamber data for evaluating SAPRC chemical mechanism. It was found that the SAPRC-11 can well predict the O3 formation and NO oxidation for almost all propene runs, with 6 hr Δ(O3 – NO) model error of –3% ± 7%, while the final O3 was underestimated by ~20% for isoprene experiments. As for toluene and p-xylene experiments, it was confirmed that SAPRC-11 has significant improvement on aromatic chemistry than earlier version of SAPRC-07, although the aromatic decay rate was still underestimated to some extent. The model sensitivity test has been carried out, and the most sensitive parameters identified are the initial concentrations of reactants and the light intensity as well as HONO offgasing rate and O3 wall loss rate. All of which demonstrated that CAPS-ZJU smog chamber could derive high quality experimental data, and could provide insights on chamber studies and chemical mechanism development.

‘Fines’ from the collision of liquid rims

Fines are smaller droplets produced from an auxiliary mechanism besides the formation of the standard drops in a fragmentation process. We report their formation in a controlled experiment which isolates an individual fragmentation protocol: the collision of two rims bordering growing adjacent holes on a liquid sheet. The standard drops come from the capillary breakup of the fused rims. Occasionally, the rims collision is strong enough to trigger a new, splash-like mechanism, producing an expanding lamellae perpendicular to the main sheet, which destabilizes into finer drops. We quantify the threshold condition for the onset of this mechanism first discovered by Lhuissier & Villermaux (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 714, 2013, pp. 361-392), we document the resulting lamellae dynamics and explain why it affects the mean drop size in the spray, broadening substantially the overall drop size distribution, which we determine. Possible applications of these findings are mentioned.

Dynamic paid peak shaving benchmarks and bidding strategies adapted to the high proportion of new energy system

This article mainly analyze the shortcomings of the inherent peak shaving auxiliary service mechanism in the high-proportion of new energy access scenarios in Northeast China, which restricts the enthusiasm of thermal power units to participate in peak shaving. For this reason, a dynamic peak shaving compensation benchmark is proposed which follows load changes. At the same time, in order to standardize market behavior and facilitate market supervision, a guiding formula is proposed for quotation of thermal power units. Based on the above, a dynamic auxiliary service market mechanism is established which used actual operating data of Liaoning province power grid as a calculation example to verify that the mechanism can effectively improve the enthusiasm of thermal power units to participate in peak shaving, which is conducive to market operation and supervision as well.

A Novel Similarity Measurement and Clustering Framework for Time Series Based on Convolution Neural Networks

In recent years, with the development of machine learning, especially after the rise of deep learning, time series clustering has been proven to effectively provide useful information in cloud computing and big data. However, many modern clustering algorithms are difficult to mine the complex features of time series, which is important for further analysis. Convolutional neural network provides powerful feature extraction capabilities and has excellent performance in classification tasks, but it is hard to be applied to clustering. Therefore, a similarity measurement method based on convolutional neural networks is proposed. This algorithm converts the number of output changes of the convolutional neural network in the same direction into the similarity of time series, so that the convolutional neural network can mine unlabeled data features in the clustering process. Especially by preferentially collecting a small amount of high similarity data to create labels, a classification algorithm based on the convolutional neural network can be used to assist clustering. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is proved by extensive experiments on the UCR time series datasets, and the experimental results show that its superior performance than other leading methods. Compared with other clustering algorithms based on deep networks, the proposed algorithm can output intermediate variables, and visually explain the principle of the algorithm. The application of financial stock linkage analysis provides an auxiliary mechanism for investment decision-making.

Effects and Mechanisms of Methyl Orange Removal from Aqueous Solutions by Modified Rice Shell Biochar

Waste rice shell (RS) was used for modified biochar preparation via different activation methods. The types of modifiers, impregnation ratio, and pyrolysis temperature have significant effects on the characteristics of biochar and the adsorption capacity of methyl orange (MO). The physical and chemical properties of modified biochar and MO adsorption mechanisms were analyzed by N2-adsorption, X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermogravimetric analyzer (TG), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) techniques. The results showed that the modified biochar (named Z2RT400) prepared at 400℃ with a mass ratio of 2:1 (ZnCl2:rice shell) had the highest adsorption capacity for MO. Under the following conditions with a solution pH value of 4, adsorbent dosage of 10 mg, initial MO concentration of 2000 mg·L-1, and reaction time of 420 min, the maximum adsorption capacity of Z2RT400 was 1967.72 mg·g-1. When the adsorbent dosage was 80 mg, the maximum removal rate reached 99.52%. The adsorption data fitted well with the pseudo-second order kinetic model and Freundlich isotherm model, which indicates that chemical adsorption is the main adsorption mechanism and physical adsorption is the auxiliary adsorption mechanism. Therefore, the waste rice shell derived biochar can be used as a highly efficient dye adsorbent in applications such as sewage treatment.

Particle Filtering With Soft State Constraints for Target Tracking

In practice, additional knowledge about the target to be tracked, other than its fundamental dynamics, can often be modeled as a set of soft constraints and utilized in a filtering process to improve the tracking performance. This paper develops a general approach to the modeling of soft inequality constraints, and investigates particle filtering (PF) with soft state constraints for target tracking. We develop two PF algorithms with soft inequality constraints, i.e., a sequential-importance-resampling particle filter and an auxiliary sampling mechanism. The latter probabilistically selects the candidate particles from the soft inequality constraints of the state variables so that they are more likely to comply with the soft constraints. The performances of the proposed algorithms are evaluated using Monte Carlo simulations in a target tracking scenario.

DMPSO: Diversity-Guided Multi-Mutation Particle Swarm Optimizer

Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a population based meta-heuristic search technique that has been widely applied to deal with various optimization problems. However, like other stochastic methods, PSO also encounters the problems of entrapment into local optima and premature convergence in solving complex multimodal problems. To tackle these issues, a diversity-guided multi-mutation particle swarm optimizer (abbreviated as DMPSO) is presented in this paper. To start with, the chaos opposition-based learning (OBL) is employed to yield high-quality initial particles to accelerate the convergence speed of DMPSO. Followed by, the self-regulating inertia weight is leveraged to strike a balance between the exploration and exploitation in the search space. After that, three different kinds of mutation strategies (gaussian, cauchy and chaotic mutations) are used to maintain the potential diversity of the whole swarm based on an effective diversity-guided mechanism. In particular, an auxiliary velocity-position update mechanism is exclusively applied to the global best particle that can effectively guarantee the convergence of the DMPSO. Finally, extensive experiments on a set of well-known unimodal and multimodal benchmark functions demonstrate that DMPSO outperforms most of the other tested PSO variants in terms of both the solution quality and its efficiency.

Late Holocene palaeo-environmental change in the Banni Plains, Kachchh, Western India

The effect of the environmental change during the Middle to Late Holocene period, on the demise of the mighty Harappan civilization has remained a topic of debate. The western India, especially the coastal regions, hosted a cluster of Harappan settlements near the shoreline. The present study attempts to reconstruct the evolution of Banni Plains of the Kachchh region, which has remained a hotspot for Harappan civilization. We employed a host of multi-proxy techniques viz., sedimentology, sediment geochemistry, magnetic susceptibility along with OSL chronology, to deduce the palaeo-environmental changes experienced by the Banni Plains from a shallow 4.05 m deep trench. The four OSL chronology of the sediments suggests the time span of 2.9 ka to 0.2 ka, revealing a first hand estimate of average sedimentation rate of 1.5 mm per annum. The enhanced chemical weathering intensities suggest that the last two millennia witnessed two phases of relatively warm and humid climatic conditions, which probably coincide with the Roman Warm Period (?) and the Medieval Warm Period (?). The Banni Plains was evolved owing to the Middle Holocene high sea stand and subsequent relative fall during the last 2 ka period. The extent of the relative high sea stand upto 2 m above msl also corroborated well by ancient port settlements of the Late Harappan period. This implies that the Harappan civilization was indeed influenced and affected by the past sea level change; nevertheless, this cannot be the sole reason for demise of the mighty civilization, but remained an auxiliary mechanism along with aridity which severed the human adaptation.

La aplicación nacional de la Carta de Derechos Fundamentales de la UE: una simple herramienta de interpretación de la eficacia de las directivas

This paper aims to analyze problems in the application of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union since its entry into force in 2009. The analysis points to the question of its effectiveness. This paper focuses on the difficulties in applying the Charter by national judges as European judges, difficulties derived from the interpretation of Art. 51.1 of the Charter. For this purpose, it will be analyzed how national judges are consistent with the criteria for application of the Charter established by European Court´s recent cases law (Melloni, Akerberg, Julian Hernandez, Torralbo Marcos ...). Finally two conclusions will be reach: first al all, the Charter is being used by the ordinary courts as a hermeneutical parameter for the distribution of normative competences between the States and the Union; secondly, the Charter has become an auxiliary mechanism in the hands of the judge for the application of the European Directives and for determination of direct effect.

Effect of chemical action on the chemical mechanical polishing of β-Ga2O3(100) substrate

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) is an essential processing step to realize ultra-precision machining of the fragile material Ga2O3 crystal and obtain ultra-smooth and undamaged crystal surface. The chemical auxiliary polishing mechanism of Ga2O3 in the CMP process was studied considering that the chemical action directly affects the CMP result. First, H3PO4 and NaOH were used to regulate the pH of slurry. This slurry was then applied to the CMP experiment of Ga2O3, and the corrosion test of Ga2O3 was implemented in H3PO4 and NaOH solutions. Second, the influence of the slurry with different acids or bases on the polishing result was analyzed. Finally, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were used to evaluate the influence of the corrosive action on the chemical structure of the crystal surface. Results showed that the slurry prepared by H3PO4 was more suitable for the CMP of Ga2O3 than that prepared by NaOH. The polishing efficiency was enhanced by approximately 20% and the surface quality was improved, with surface roughness of 0.21 nm. This study provides a reference for preparing the slurry of Ga2O3.

A Feasible Fuzzy-Extended Attribute-Based Access Control Technique

Attribute-based access control (ABAC) is a maturing authorization technique with outstanding expressiveness and scalability, which shows its overwhelmingly competitive advantage, especially in complicated dynamic environments. Unfortunately, the absence of a flexible exceptional approval mechanism in ABAC impairs the resource usability and business time efficiency in current practice, which could limit its growth. In this paper, we propose a feasible fuzzy-extended ABAC (FBAC) technique to improve the flexibility in urgent exceptional authorizations and thereby improving the resource usability and business timeliness. We use the fuzzy assessment mechanism to evaluate the policy-matching degrees of the requests that do not comply with policies, so that the system can make special approval decisions accordingly to achieve unattended exceptional authorizations. We also designed an auxiliary credit mechanism accompanied by periodic credit adjustment auditing to regulate expediential authorizations for mitigating risks. Theoretical analyses and experimental evaluations show that the FBAC approach enhances resource immediacy and usability with controllable risk.