Solution Concept Research Articles

Alternative Security of the Combat Readiness Recovery Using 3D Printing and Reverse Engineering

Disrupting spare parts supply chains can harm the smooth running of an organization. In the case of military vehicles, weapons or other types of equipment used on the battlefield, this is a serious threat that may result in the inability to continue some tactical operations. An ad hoc way to maintain the ability to take action while the appropriate spare parts are delivered and to improve damaged devices may be to produce the damaged components locally. Such a temporary solution is possible for relatively simple elements whose structure, mechanical properties and principle of operation can be determined on a reverse engineering basis. This article describes the concept of alternative solutions for temporarily repairing damaged devices by producing spare parts in mobile specialized production subunits. This paper characterizes the types of 3D printing, contemporary examples of use in foreign armies, priorities of international alliances related to 3D printing, and a case study of repairing an unmanned aircraft by means of 3D printing. Using the experience and knowledge of foreign armies, adapting the possibilities of 3D printing applications to one's own needs, defining legal regulations and creating properly equipped subunits makes it possible to implement the presented concept. Creating conditions for implementing the described concept facilitates the production of a suitable product range in peace, crisis or conflict situations, which may significantly contribute to increasing the level of readiness of the national defense systems.

Development Patterns of Universal Design in Residential Courtyards in the Jugla Neighbourhood

Quality and accessible outdoor living space in the immediate vicinity of one's home is an important factor in ensuring people's well-being, safety and community belonging. Access to building entrances is one of the key conditions for people to be able to reach the outdoors and enjoy equal mobility opportunities. Thus, one of the important challenges in achieving the principles and objectives of universal design on a small scale is related to building entrance areas. The building regulations at the time when most of Riga's large-scale residential areas were built did not include requirements for environmental accessibility solutions. Most of the entrance areas of residential buildings and adjacent areas were constructed according to the construction practices of the time, using concrete steps to connect the carriageway level with the staircase doors. The study therefore includes conceptual solutions for environmental accessibility in building entrance areas - existing locations with specific environmental characteristics that would be applicable to as many building entrances as possible, regardless of the location of the buildings.

Ecological ditch technology and development prospect based on nature-based solutions: a review.

The core of the concept of nature-based solutions (NBS) is ecological protection, which is the same direction as China's double-carbon goal and has attracted much attention in China. Ecological ditch sewage treatment technology has been widely used in controlling agricultural non-point source pollution because of its advantages of high pollutant removal efficiency and low energy consumption. Suppose the NBS concept of sustainable management, restoration, and ecological protection is integrated into the research and development and application of ecological ditch technology. In that case, it can not only improve the effective removal of pollutants, achieve the purpose of recycling water resources and nutrient elements, but also realize economic, environmental, and social benefits. This paper describes the ecosystem service functions provided by ecological ditches in detail, evaluates their economic values through literatures review, so as to raise people's awareness of natural resource conservation and realize the sustainable management of ecological ditches.

Unified Fair Allocation of Goods and Chores via Copies

We consider fair allocation of indivisible items in a model with goods, chores, and copies, as a unified framework for studying: (1) the existence of EFX and other solution concepts for goods with copies; (2) the existence of EFX and other solution concepts for chores. We establish a tight relation between these issues via two conceptual contributions: First, a refinement of envy-based fairness notions that we term envy without commons (denoted EFX WC when applied to EFX). Second, a formal duality theorem relating the existence of a host of (refined) fair allocation concepts for copies to their existence for chores. We demonstrate the usefulness of our duality result by using it to characterize the existence of EFX for chores through the dual environment, as well as to prove EFX existence in the special case of leveled preferences over the chores. We further study the hierarchy among envy-freeness notions without commons and their α-MMS guarantees, showing, for example, that any EFX WC allocation guarantees at least \(\frac{4}{11}\) -MMS for goods with copies.

Assisted migration in a warmer and drier climate: less climate buffering capacity, less facilitation and more fires at temperate latitudes?

Assisted tree migration has been proposed as a conceptual solution to mitigate lags in biotic responses to anthropogenic climate change. The rationale behind this concept is that tree species currently growing under warmer and drier climates will be more resistant and resilient to the new climatic conditions than tree species naturally growing in currently wetter and colder climates. However, we hypothesize that, by being more stress‐tolerant to warmer and drier conditions, translocated species should exhibit different functional attributes, which could induce important ecological and societal costs and overcome the desired benefits of maintaining wood production and other ecosystem services. We used principal component analysis (PCA) to analyze variation in seven traits of 106 tree and tall shrub species from contrasting latitudinal distributions in western North America and Europe to predict the potential functional changes of forest ecosystems due to the translocation of tree species from low to high latitudes. We show that species from both continents differed primarily by their position on the leaf economy spectrum (LES) and their size traits. Even though, in Europe, differences in LES were significantly correlated to species southern latitudinal positions, in both continents differences in size traits were significantly correlated to latitude. These results suggest that assisted migration by translocating more conservative species of shorter stature in currently cooler climates should decrease the buffering capacity of forest canopies, decrease facilitation for understory species, and increase wildfire risks, whose effects have the potential to accelerate climate warming through negative atmospheric feedback processes. As an alternative solution to assisted migration that may accelerate rather than mitigate climate change, we recommend that foresters gradually diversify the vertical structure and layering of the existing forest canopy to maintain a sustainable water cycle and energy balance between the soil, the tree and the atmosphere without increasing the wildfire risk.

Application and Challenges of Coalitional Game Theory in Power Systems for Sustainable Energy Trading Communities

The role of prosumers is changing as they become active and empowered members of the grid by exchanging energy. This introduces bidirectional power flow and other challenges into the existing power systems, which require new approaches capable of dealing with the increased decentralization and complexity. Such approaches rely on game-theoretic models and mechanisms to analyze strategic decisions in competitive settings. More specifically, a coalitional game can encourage participants to trade energy with one another and obtain fair and sustainable outcomes. Therefore, the contents of this work address the coalitional game for sustainable energy trading, as well as the challenges associated with its application in power systems. This is achieved by identifying literature works that successfully implemented coalitional games in energy trading and management applications while providing an overview of solution concepts and discussing their properties and contributions to sustainability. Moreover, this work also proposes conditions that peer-to-peer energy trading should satisfy to be considered sustainable. Finally, a case study is presented to demonstrate how a coalitional game and various solution concepts can be successfully implemented to ensure the benefits and stability of cooperation in power systems. The weighted Shapley value is proposed to allocate profits among communities according to their level of sustainability.

Telemedicine and experimental legal regimes in the field of healthcare: problems and prospects for implementation

In connection with the adoption of Federal Law No. 258-FZ of July 31, 2020 “On experimental legal regimes in the field of digital innovation in the Russian Federation,” a number of initiatives have been developed to establish experimental legal regimes in the field of telemedicine. The idea of using digital technologies in medicine is certainly relevant. On the one hand, the prospect of remotely receiving medical services is practically in demand; on the other, the level of technology development currently allows for a significant expansion of their implementation. The need to turn to the institution of an experimental legal regime is due to the fact that the current legislation contains norms that seriously complicate the process of widespread dissemination of telemedicine services.The purpose of the study is to reveal the theoretical characteristics of the concept of telemedicine and its current state, to identify legal obstacles to its development, to conduct a comparative analysis of existing draft programs of experimental regimes, to assess the problems and prospects for the development of telemedicine technologies in modern Russian practice. The study is based on domestic and foreign scientific sources of both legal and medical nature, as well as current and projected legal acts in the field of medical services, digital technologies, and personal data protection. Formal-legal, comparative-legal, statistical, and prognostic methods are used. Several problems that require a conceptual solution, including the issue of the safety of personal data and the issue of responsibility for a medical error resulting from the use of artificial intelligence technology or a technical device have been identified. Both are unlikely to be completely resolved at the current level of legal regulation and technological development. This, however, only confirms the need to introduce appropriate experimental regimes in order to use the accumulated empirical material to find solutions to existing and abstractly predictable problems.

Lysosomal destabilization: A missing link between pathological calcification and osteoarthritis

Calcification of cartilage by hydroxyapatite is a hallmark of osteoarthritis and its deposition strongly correlates with the severity of osteoarthritis. However, no effective strategies are available to date on the prevention of hydroxyapatite deposition within the osteoarthritic cartilage and its role in the pathogenesis of this degenerative condition is still controversial. Therefore, the present work aims at uncovering the pathogenic mechanism of intra-cartilaginous hydroxyapatite in osteoarthritis and developing feasible strategies to counter its detrimental effects. With the use of in vitro and in vivo models of osteoarthritis, hydroxyapatite crystallites deposited in the cartilage are found to be phagocytized by resident chondrocytes and processed by the lysosomes of those cells. This results in lysosomal membrane permeabilization (LMP) and release of cathepsin B (CTSB) into the cytosol. The cytosolic CTSB, in turn, activates NOD-like receptor protein-3 (NLRP3) inflammasomes and subsequently instigates chondrocyte pyroptosis. Inhibition of LMP and CTSB in vivo are effective in managing the progression of osteoarthritis. The present work provides a conceptual therapeutic solution for the prevention of osteoarthritis via alleviation of lysosomal destabilization.

Incomplete cooperative games with player-centered information

The computation of a solution concept of a cooperative game usually employs values of all coalitions. However, in some applications, the values of some of the coalitions might be unknown due to high costs associated with their determination or simply because it is not possible to determine them exactly. We introduce a method to approximate standard solution concepts based only on partial characteristic function of the cooperative game. In this paper, we build on our previous results and generalise the results of our methods to a significantly larger class of structures of incomplete information.

Using Plants of Novel Ecosystems as Resources to Create Green Roofs in Cities’ Adaptation to the Climate Change Process

Using local wild plant resources to create green roofs in urban areas is a sustainable solution that supports cities' adaptation strategies to climate change. Creating extensive green roofs, in accordance with the Nature-Based Solutions concept, supports minimizing the effects of climate change, loss of biodiversity and human health. The aim of this paper is to identify, based on an analysis of published research results, the main criteria for selecting vegetation introduced to green roofs and the role of green roofs in minimizing the effects of climate change in the context of NBS. The data were collected by analyzing the results of studies published in the last 10 years, focusing on plant selection. It was found that species selection often fails to consider plant functional traits. The potential of wild plants in urban-industrial areas for creating green infrastructure and optimizing ecosystem services remains largely unrecognized. However, certain plants with desirable functional traits, originating e.g. from habitats such as post-industrial coal mining waste heaps, show promise in providing functional support to urban ecosystems in minimizing the effects of climate change.

Assessing Antithetic Sampling for Approximating Shapley, Banzhaf, and Owen Values

Computing Shapley values for large cooperative games is an NP-hard problem. For practical applications, stochastic approximation via permutation sampling is widely used. In the context of machine learning applications of the Shapley value, the concept of antithetic sampling has become popular. The idea is to employ the reverse permutation of a sample in order to reduce variance and accelerate convergence of the algorithm. We study this approach for the Shapley and Banzhaf values, as well as for the Owen value which is a solution concept for games with precoalitions. We combine antithetic samples with established stratified sampling algorithms. Finally, we evaluate the performance of these algorithms on four different types of cooperative games.

About the Automation of an Autonomous Sail-propelled Search Drone

The paper presents the prototype of an autonomous sail-propelled vehicle, powered by sails and equipped with mini solar panels, intended for the surveillance of maritime space. Hardware and software aspects regarding the automation of this unmanned boat are addressed. Conceptual solutions have been identified to ensure short manufacturing times, component accessibility (price and availability on the free market), and high system reliability. The paper proposes an original solution to respond to at least two imperative needs: the safety and security of commercial and military navigation in the Black Sea area (faced with a tense geo-political climate) and the increased need to integrate European and global policies on reducing pollution and promoting renewable energy principles.

Solving Fuzzy Optimization Problems Using Shapley Values and Evolutionary Algorithms

The fusion of evolutionary algorithms and the solution concepts of cooperative game theory is proposed in this paper to solve the fuzzy optimization problems. The original fuzzy optimization problem is transformed into a scalar optimization problem by assigning some suitable coefficients. The assignment of those coefficients is frequently determined by the decision-makers via their subjectivity, which may cause some biases. In order to avoid these subjective biases, a cooperative game is formulated by considering the α-level functions of the fuzzy objective function. Using the Shapley values of this formulated cooperative game, the suitable coefficients can be reasonably set up. Under these settings, the transformed scalar optimization problem is solved to obtain the nondominated solution, which will depend on the coefficients. In other words, we shall obtain a bunch of nondominated solutions depending on the coefficients. Finally, the evolutionary algorithms are invoked to find the best nondominated solution by evolving the coefficients.

Empiric Solutions to Full Fuzzy Linear Programming Problems Using the Generalized “min” Operator

Solving optimization problems in a fuzzy environment is an area widely addressed in the recent literature. De-fuzzification of data, construction of crisp more or less equivalent problems, unification of multiple objectives, and solving a single crisp optimization problem are the general descriptions of many procedures that approach fuzzy optimization problems. Such procedures are misleading (since relevant information is lost through de-fuzzyfication and aggregation of more objectives into a single one), but they are still dominant in the literature due to their simplicity. In this paper, we address the full fuzzy linear programming problem, and provide solutions in full accordance with the extension principle. The main contribution of this paper is in modeling the conjunction of the fuzzy sets using the “product” operator instead of “min” within the definition of the solution concept. Our theoretical findings show that using a generalized “min” operator within the extension principle assures thinner shapes to the derived fuzzy solutions compared to those available in the literature. Thinner shapes are always desirable, since such solutions provide the decision maker with more significant information.

Digitally Enhanced Business Pedagogy: The Evolution and Implications of Digital Business Presentations inHigher Education Institutions

The article assesses the importance of the Digital Business Presentations (DBP) in science and teaching in the context of contemporary communication, dominated by the digital approach, not only in the field of analysis, but also in the visualization of information. In an era when we increasingly use computer tools (programs and applications) and appreciate short but interesting content, digital presentations have become important for both business and science. Using various methods and techniques, the DBP allows the presentation of complicated ideas in an uncomplicated way. They usually last from 3 to 10 minutes and focus on the essence of the concept of a new solution and its business application. The main aim of the article is to review and propose new tools that enable students to practically present their ideas related to various subjects, such as Entrepreneurship, Logistics, Marketing etc. The article also shows some trends in communication, where knowledge of the basic values and principles of the DBP affects the way we currently present innovative ideas on the discussion forum in business.

Digitally Enhanced Business Pedagogy: The Evolution and Implications of Digital Business Presentations in Higher Education Institutions

The article assesses the importance of the Digital Business Presentations (DBP) in science and teaching in the context of contemporary communication, dominated by the digital approach, not only in the field of analysis, but also in the visualization of information. In an era when we increasingly use computer tools (programs and applications) and appreciate short but interesting content, digital presentations have become important for both business and science. Using various methods and techniques, the DBP allows the presentation of complicated ideas in an uncomplicated way. They usually last from 3 to 10 minutes and focus on the essence of the concept of a new solution and its business application. The main aim of the article is to review and propose new tools that enable students to practically present their ideas related to various subjects, such as Entrepreneurship, Logistics, Marketing etc. The article also shows some trends in communication, where knowledge of the basic values and principles of the DBP affects the way we currently present innovative ideas on the discussion forum in business.

Digitally Enhanced Business Pedagogy: The Evolution and Implications of Digital Business Presentations in Higher Education Institutions

The article assesses the importance of the Digital Business Presentations (DBP) in science and teaching in the context of contemporary communication, dominated by the digital approach, not only in the field of analysis, but also in the visualization of information. In an era when we increasingly use computer tools (programs and applications) and appreciate short but interesting content, digital presentations have become important for both business and science. Using various methods and techniques, the DBP allows the presentation of complicated ideas in an uncomplicated way. They usually last from 3 to 10 minutes and focus on the essence of the concept of a new solution and its business application. The main aim of the article is to review and propose new tools that enable students to practically present their ideas related to various subjects, such as Entrepreneurship, Logistics, Marketing etc. The article also shows some trends in communication, where knowledge of the basic values and principles of the DBP affects the way we currently present innovative ideas on the discussion forum in business.

Conceptual Solution of the Green PV – Hydrogen Complex on the Existing Infrastructure of the Thermal Power Plant “Morava”

The paper presents the concept of replacing the existing thermal power plant Morava with facilities for the production, storage and combustion of green hydrogen. The facilities for the production of hydrogen would consist of an electrolyzer and a photovoltaic power plant, which is planned at the existing ash pit within the Morava thermal power plant. Hydrogen storage systems would also be part of the existing thermal power plant complex. The production of electricity would be carried out in a thermal power plant with a gas turbine powered by a mixture of hydrogen and natural gas, which would be built and connected to the power system at the site of the existing 110 kV substation. It would also be foreseen to use thermal energy that would serve for heating the households near the thermal power plant. Such a complex would enable the existing infrastructure of the Morava thermal power plant to be reoriented to the production of manageable green energy.

Emergency stabilization of a landslide in Pirin National Park

The investigated landslide occurred in December 2021 on a steep river-valley slope in the southwestern part of the Pirin National Park. It has a typical circular shape with approximate dimensions: width of 20 m, length of 15 m and depth up to 4 m. The sliding involves mainly the soil-rock mass of the road embankment. The landslide affects a forest road and threatens the hydraulic canal “Syrchaliytsa” of the “Sandanska Bistritsa” cascade. The study is based on an on-site inspection and geotechnical mapping, its analysis and interpretation, aided by available archival and published data, and the authors’ personal experience of similar sites in the area and other parts of the country. The main objectives are to establish the engineering-geological conditions of the terrain, assess the main factors defining the landslide stability and develop a conceptual solution for its strengthening.

A CONCEPTUAL TAAJIR MULTI-SIDED PLATFORM BUSINESS MODEL:NURTURING ENTERENEURIAL SKILLS AND ENHANCE JOB OPPORTUNITIES FOR B40 STUDENTS

It is not a secret that many university students are looking for job opportunities to do during their period of higher education. There are many reasons behind this search of theirs with monetary cases–especially for the B40 students–and job experience seeking that are related to their areas of study, being the top reasons. Unfortunately, finding a job that does not interfere with their studies is very hard to do. This paper is aiming to offer conceptual ideas of Taajir multi-sided platform business model that plan to address the two problems mentioned above which are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in reducing poverty and creating a decent work and economic growth (SDG 1 and SDG 8). This paper discusses the key challenges and extreme pains that various customer segments confront, as well as a conceptual solution for overcoming those challenges. Adapting the Design Thinking (DT) approach using business modelling tools such as the Business Model Canvas (BMC) and the Value Proposition Canvas (VPC), the key problems and extreme pains were identified and viable conceptual solutions were generated. The DT approach entails conducting literature review, benchmarking, and interviews in understanding the extreme pains; ideation and brainstorming, design and testing of business model prototype in the form of BMC and VPC framework with various customer segments via surveys; and establish possible conceptual solutions in terms of business model and low-fidelity apps.