Manpower Costs Research Articles

Google Lens: A potential cost-effective screening tool for diabetic retinopathy

Background: Diabetic retinopathy (DR) is a major, sight-threatening complication of diabetes mellitus. Blindness from DR can be prevented by successful and proactive screening. However, DR is screened in less than half of the patients because of barriers in availability, affordability, accessibility, and awareness. Although artificial intelligence (AI)-based algorithms are being evaluated for DR screening, they have limitations of infrastructure, accessibility, training, and manpower cost. Therefore, simpler and more practical DR screening tools should be explored.
 Hypothesis: Google Lens, an easily available, vision- and AI-based application in most smartphones, is a potential tool for cost-effective DR screening. It recognises images through a visual analysis based on neural networking. Thus, it can recognize retinal disorders, such as DR, in images. The development and adoption of Google Lens-based DR screening would have several advantages over the conventional hospital/specialist/healthcare facility-based approach, including widespread accessibility, acceptable accuracy, reduction in the direct cost of healthcare for patients with diabetes mellitus, and active patient participation in self-care.
 Conclusions: DR screening, detection, and grading using Google Lens is a feasible and effective option. Despite current limitations, it could transform DR screening from a costly, hospital- and expert-based method to a cost-effective, self-applicable, and home-based one. However, diagnostic accuracy studies comparing the index test with Google Lens-based screening are required to determine the usability and validity of this proposed screening tool for DR.

Separation of TiO2 particles from suspension using indigenous low-cost ceramic microfiltration membrane

The increased use of TiO2 nanoparticles in manufacturing and commercial products has led to environmental contamination and health issues. This study aimed to apply tubular ceramic membrane fabricated using low-cost clays (kaolin, quartz) along with hydroxypropyl methylcellulose binder for the separation of TiO2 nanoparticles from water. The prepared tubular ceramic membrane exhibited excellent water permeability (1.4945 × 10−7 m3/m2s kPa) with an average pore size of 0.178 μm and porosity of 40 %. Cross flow microfiltration experiments using TiO2 nanoparticles suspension were performed by varying the applied pressure (138–414 kPa), cross flow velocity (2.41 × 10−3 - 5.63 × 10−3 m/s), pH (4–11) and feed concentration (0.05–1 wt%). The permeate flux increased linearly with an increase in the pressure as well as cross flow velocity with a maximum permeate flux of 4.24 × 10−5 m3/m2s at 414 kPa, whereas a reduction in permeate flux was observed with increasing feed concentration of TiO2. The membrane displayed 100 % separation efficiency at all the investigated pressures. Furthermore, the membrane fouling mechanism during the microfiltration process was analyzed using resistance-in-series model. Results demonstrated that filtration resistance (Rf) and total resistance (Rt) decreased with increasing cross flow velocity from 2.41 × 10−3 m/s to 5.63 × 10−3 m/s, whereas filtration resistance remained constant at high pressures. The estimated membrane cost is 253 USD/m2 based on raw materials, energy consumption, manpower and equipment cost. These promising results elucidated the suitability of tubular ceramic membrane towards the removal of TiO2 from wastewater.

An effective statistical process control scheme for industrial environmental monitoring

One major source of environmental pollution is industrial effluents, especially the heavy metal pollutants, including zinc, in the wastewater discharged from manufacturing industries (hereinafter known as an environmental process). The safe disposal of such effluents into aquatic environments is very crucial and of great health and environmental concerns worldwide. To safeguard the quality of the receiving waters, continuous and effective monitoring of zinc in industrial effluents before discharging it into the environment is essential. However, the real-life environmental data are often skewed and do not follow the normal distribution. Therefore, classical statistical process monitoring techniques based on normality assumptions cannot be used directly to monitor the environmental processes. To overcome this limitation, this study designs an optimal X‾ scheme for monitoring non-normal zinc data in industrial effluents. This scheme minimizes the total cost, including quality and manpower costs, based on optimal deployment of manpower. The optimization process ensures that the false alarm rate of the monitoring scheme meets the allowable value. A fractional factorial experiment considering different design specifications shows that the proposed optimal X‾ scheme reduces the associated costs by about 69% and 36% compared to the basic X‾ and improved X‾ schemes, respectively. The robustness of the performance of the optimal X‾ scheme is further investigated under different non-normal, and process shift distributions. A sensitivity analysis is also conducted to explore the impact of the input parameters on the associated cost of the optimal X‾ scheme. Lastly, the design and application of the proposed optimal X‾ scheme are presented using real data on zinc content in the wastewater emitted from a steel production plant.

High-Strength Iron Wire-Like Carbon Nanotubes in the Construction of a Digital Smart Logistics Supply Chain System

Today, modern logistics and transportation as a whole still have many problems such as high cost, low efficiency, and poor service quality. This article aims to improve the efficiency of various logistics departments. In order to explore the role of high-strength steel wires as carbon nanotubes in the construction of digital logistics systems, this article saves manpower and management costs in the logistics process and effectively manages information transportation and operating costs by sensing and controlling automated processing and operating procedures. It can effectively solve technical problems and create a complete logistics system that meets product needs. The results of the study show that through the transformation of traditional logistics through carbon nanotubes, the efficiency of digital logistics is relatively stable, with an average value of about 2.5, which takes more than 30% less time than traditional logistics.

Automatic Ore Blending Optimization Algorithm for Sintering Based on the Cartesian Product

In actual sinter production, batching is a complex metallurgical and mathematical problem. Aiming at the problem of the precising batching of iron ore in the process of sintering batching, an automatic batching algorithm based on a Cartesian product to batch sinter was proposed for the first time. When the algorithm is applied to the sintering batching process, a complete batching scheme can be obtained, which can realize the organic combination with other calculation processes, can effectively save the manpower and material cost of sintering batching, and is of great significance to the comprehensive use of iron ore resources. Taking the actual sintering production batching of a domestic iron and steel plant as an example, according to the batching requirements compared with various ore batching schemes, combined with the actual production situation, the automatic batching optimization algorithm based on a Cartesian product is applied to build a mathematical model of sintering batching. Through the algorithm test, the practicability of the automatic batching algorithm is verified. In addition, the automatic batching algorithm based on a Cartesian product has good performance in other batching fields.

Meningkatkan Kualitas Sumber Daya Manusia (SDM) melalui Pelatihan Produktivitas oleh Dinas Tenaga Kerja Mandailing Natal

Mandailing Natal Panyabungan Manpower Office. The main task of the Manpower Service is as a government agency in the field of manpower in its working area. The functions of the Manpower Office include formulating manpower policies, implementing manpower policies, labor administration, labor supervision, reporting and evaluating the workforce. Related to its duties and functions, the local Manpower Office has several licensing powers such as Permits to Employ Foreign Workers (IMTA), Operational Permits for Employment Service Providers/Labourers, Employment Cards and Permits, Work Permits, to Work Center Institution Permits (BLK). . For information on requirements for obtaining a permit from the Manpower Office, costs (if any) and others, you can ask directly at the office. The public can also contact the telephone contact of the Manpower Office for a quick response, or access the website of the Manpower Office for general information and news related to employment. This research technique involves using a qualitative approach.
 Keywords: Department of Manpower, Job Training Center (BLK), Human Resources

Meningkatkan Kualitas Sumber Daya Manusia (SDM) melalui Pelatihan Produktivitas oleh Dinas Tenaga Kerja Mandailing Natal

Mandailing Natal Panyabungan Manpower Office. The main task of the Manpower Service is as a government agency in the field of manpower in its working area. The functions of the Manpower Office include formulating manpower policies, implementing manpower policies, labor administration, labor supervision, reporting and evaluating the workforce. Related to its duties and functions, the local Manpower Office has several licensing powers such as Permits to Employ Foreign Workers (IMTA), Operational Permits for Employment Service Providers/Labourers, Employment Cards and Permits, Work Permits, to Work Center Institution Permits (BLK). . For information on requirements for obtaining a permit from the Manpower Office, costs (if any) and others, you can ask directly at the office. The public can also contact the telephone contact of the Manpower Office for a quick response, or access the website of the Manpower Office for general information and news related to employment. This research technique involves using a qualitative approach.
 Keywords: Department of Manpower, Job Training Center (BLK), Human Resources

A failure mode, effects and criticality analysis-based method for formwork assessment and selection in building construction

PurposeThis study aims at introducing a method based on the failure mode, effects and criticality analysis (FMECA) to aid in selecting the most suitable formwork system with the minimum overall cost.Design/methodology/approachThe research includes a review of the literature around formwork selection and analysis of data collected from the building construction industry to understand material failure modes. An FMECA-based model that estimates the total cost of a formwork system is developed by conducting a two-phased semi-structured interview and regression and statistical analyses. The model comprises material, manpower and failure mode costs. A case study of fifteen buildings is analysed using data collected from construction projects in the UAE to validate the model.FindingsResults obtained indicate an average accuracy of 89% in predicting the total formwork cost using the proposed method. Moreover, results show that the costs incurred by failure modes account for 11% of the total cost on average.Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis is limited to direct costs and costs associated with risks; other costs and risk factors are excluded. The proposed framework serves as a guide to construction project managers to enhance decision-making by addressing the indirect cost of failure modes.Originality/valueThe research proposes a novel formwork system selection method that improves upon the subjective conventional selection process by incorporating the risks and uncertainties associated with the failure modes of formwork systems into the decision-making process.

Effects of Different Bud Thinning Methods on Nutritional Quality and Antioxidant Activities of Fruiting Bodies of Pleurotus eryngii.

The cultivation of Pleurotus eryngii was studied by different methods, such as puncturing and fixed-point mushroom production, shading treatment at the top of the bag, and pulling the top of the bag. The agronomic characters, yield, nutritional components, and antioxidant activities in vitro of fruiting bodies of P. eryngii were determined. The results showed that the number of buds in the perforated treatment was less than that in the production method of traditional fruiting bodies to a certain extent. When a circular hole with a diameter of 1.5 cm was drilled in the perforated treatment, the number of buds was 5, which was less than that in the control group. The efficiency of artificial removal of buds was significantly higher than that of the control group, but the harvesting date was longer than that of other methods. The number of buds in shading treatment and bag opening treatment was significantly less than that in the control group, which could effectively control the number of buds and reduce the cost of manpower and material resources. In terms of nutritional components, the A3 treatment group with a hole diameter of 1.0 cm and a quantity of one had the highest crude protein content of 151.34 g, and a significant difference was observed in crude fiber content compared with other treatments. The extraction rate of B5 crude polysaccharide was the highest, and the extraction rate was 12.90%. The antioxidant activities in vitro increased with the increase of crude polysaccharide concentration. Using A3 treatment to cultivate fruiting bodies is conducive to meeting people’s requirements for improving quality of life.

Individual scheduling approach for multi-class airline cabin crew with manpower requirement heterogeneity

The cabin crew pairing problem is one of the major challenges faced by airlines. Traditionally, multi-class cabin crews are scheduled on a team basis separated by aircraft types (families) as cockpit crews. However, the manpower requirements for cabin crew across aircraft types (families) are heterogeneous, which cannot be handled by the team scheduling approach. Thus, some airlines nowadays are adopting the individual scheduling approach to deal with the flight manpower requirement heterogeneity. Motivated by the emergence of the individual cabin crew pairing practice, we conduct an analytical study which aims at improving manpower utilization while reducing costs by utilizing a new individual cabin crew pairing generation approach. We also mathematically formulate crew substitution in the model which can help hedge against manpower requirement variations. The impacts of the relationship between manpower availability with requirement benchmarks on cabin crew scheduling strategies are investigated to derive deep insights. A column generation based solution approach is developed. Computational experiments based on small-scale real-world collected flight schedules are conducted to test the distinctive features of the proposed individual pairing model. In addition, a series of large hypothetical instances are employed to examine the advantages of the proposed model over the traditional team-based model in terms of manpower utilization improvement and cost reduction through a customized Genetic Algorithm.

Smart Automation Aquaponics Monitoring System

Modern agriculture, such as aquaponics, has become a well-known solution nowadays for farming, especially in Asia countries. It provides an alternative to support food demands and maintain environmental sustainability. However, it requires manpower and time to maintain and monitor the system. This research proposes a smart automation aquaponic monitoring system that helps users maintain and monitor the system through smartphone applications. The system uses DHT11 to record temperature and humidity, HC-SR04 for water level, and FC-28 to maintain soil moisture. The sensors are integrated with WeMos D1 Wi-Fi Uno based ESP8266 microcontroller to process the data. The data collected is stored in the cloud and retrieved via the Blynk application, which also performs as an actuator and allows users to control the parameters involved. The application helps to monitor the humidity, temperature, and water level in the fish tank and control the actuator for feeding fish. The system also sends a notification to the user for any activities performed, such as watering plants, feeding fish, and abnormality of temperature in the surroundings. The performance of the system was evaluated using regression modeling. The result indicates positive growth for both plants and fish during the monitoring duration, suggesting the proposed system's effectiveness. Overall, this solution helps to reduce manpower and operation costs as well as alternatives for food demand and stabilize environmental sustainability, especially in the urban residency.

Twin Inverter-Fed Induction Machines Artificial Loading Without Mechanical Coupling

This article presents an artificial loading method for induction machines using industrial static frequency converters (VFCs), low cost programmable logic controllers (PLCs) for command and control and standardized communication protocols. Different approaches of artificial loading method are presented in this paper. Induction machine full load testing is difficult, especially at high power and almost impossible for vertical axis machines. Mechanized IM start/stop procedure and closed-loop loading method, here presented, reduce overall testing time. The overall manpower cost is reduced thanks to the lack of IMs mechanical coupling. Moreover, thermal test at rated IM current and power losses equivalation are presented in this paper. Bidirectional VFC utilization for a single motor can't always be a solution for artificial loading because of high variations of grid power (voltage). Two identical IMs without mechanical coupling driven by two identical dc bus interconnected VFCs artificial loading method is presented in this paper. The power circulation between the machines is performed via the common dc link. This opens the possibility to test machines with rated power larger than the lab power source rating. The rated current artificial loading conditions are achieved without mechanical coupling, without VFC oversizing and using standard equipment.

Meningkatkan Kualitas Sumber Daya Manusia (SDM) Melalui Pelatihan Produktivitas Oleh Dinas Tenaga Kerja Mandailing Natal

Mandailing Natal Panyabungan Manpower Office. The main task of the Manpower Service is as a government agency in the field of manpower in its working area. The functions of the Manpower Office include formulating manpower policies, implementing manpower policies, labor administration, labor supervision, reporting and evaluating the workforce. Related to its duties and functions, the local Manpower Office has several licensing powers such as Permits to Employ Foreign Workers (IMTA), Operational Permits for Employment Service Providers/Labourers, Employment Cards and Permits, Work Permits, to Work Center Institution Permits (BLK). . For information on requirements for obtaining a permit from the Manpower Office, costs (if any) and others, you can ask directly at the office. The public can also contact the telephone contact of the Manpower Office for a quick response, or access the website of the Manpower Office for general information and news related to employment. This research technique involves using a qualitative approach.
 Keywords: Department of Manpower, Job Training Center (BLK), Human Resources

A Multi-Dimensional Investigation on Water Quality of Urban Rivers with Emphasis on Implications for the Optimization of Monitoring Strategy

Water quality monitoring (WQM) of urban rivers has been a reliable method to supervise the urban water environment. Indiscriminate WQM strategies can hardly emphasize the concerning pollution and usually require high costs of money, time, and manpower. To tackle these issues, this work carried out a multi-dimensional study (large spatial scale, multiple monitoring parameters, and long time scale) on the water quality of two urban rivers in Jiujiang City, China, which can provide indicative information for the optimization of WQM. Of note, the spatial distribution of NH3-N concentration varied significantly both in terms of the two different rivers as well as the different sections (i.e., much higher in the northern section), with a maximal difference, on average greater, than five times. Statistical methods and machine learning algorithms were applied to optimize the monitoring objects, parameters, and frequency. The sharp decrease in water quality of adjacent sections was identified by Analytical Hierarchy Process of water quality assessment indexes. After correlation analysis, principal component analysis, and cluster analysis, the various WQM parameters could be divided into three principal components and four clusters. With the machine learning algorithm of Random Forest, the relation between concentration of pollutants and rainfall depth was fitted using quadratic functions (calculated Pearson correlation coefficients ≥ 0.89), which could help predict the pollution after precipitation and further determine the appropriate WQM frequency. Generally, this work provides a novel thought for efficient, smart, and low-cost water quality investigation and monitoring strategy determination, which contributes to the construction of smart water systems and sustainable water source management.

GLTM: A Global-Local Attention LSTM Model to Locate Dimer Motif of Single-Pass Membrane Proteins.

Single-pass membrane proteins, which constitute up to 50% of all transmembrane proteins, are typically active in significant conformational changes, such as a dimer or other oligomers, which is essential for understanding the function of transmembrane proteins. Finding the key motifs of oligomers through experimental observation is a routine method used in the field to infer the potential conformations of other members of the transmembrane protein family. However, approaches based on experimental observation need to consume a lot of time and manpower costs; moreover, they are hard to reveal the potential motifs. A proposed approach is to build an accurate and efficient transmembrane protein oligomer prediction model to screen the key motifs. In this paper, an attention-based Global-Local structure LSTM model named GLTM is proposed to predict dimers and screen potential dimer motifs. Different from traditional motifs screening based on highly conserved sequence search frame, a self-attention mechanism has been employed in GLTM to locate the highest dimerization score of subsequence fragments and has been proven to locate most known dimer motifs well. The proposed GLTM can reach 97.5% accuracy on the benchmark dataset collected from Membranome2.0. The three characteristics of GLTM can be summarized as follows: First, the original sequence fragment was converted to a set of subsequences which having the similar length of known motifs, and this additional step can greatly enhance the capability of capturing motif pattern; Second, to solve the problem of sample imbalance, a novel data enhancement approach combining improved one-hot encoding with random subsequence windows has been proposed to improve the generalization capability of GLTM; Third, position penalization has been taken into account, which makes a self-attention mechanism focused on special TM fragments. The experimental results in this paper fully demonstrated that the proposed GLTM has a broad application perspective on the location of potential oligomer motifs, and is helpful for preliminary and rapid research on the conformational change of mutants.

Intelligent monitoring and residual analysis of tunnel point cloud data based on free-form approximation

With the rapid development of urban rail transit and the aging of transportation infrastructure, the demand for shield tunnel disaster detection is about to break out. Most of the traditional monitoring methods require considerable manpower and time costs, which cannot satisfy the increasing requirements of tunnel operation and maintenance. Free-form model construction and deviation mechanism analysis are investigated in this paper to monitor the geometric deformation information of shield tunnels quickly and accurately. A method for identifying geometric features of tunnel sections based on the free-form B-spline approximation is proposed. The innovation of this paper lies in the intelligent recognition of common interference targets by the residual classification method. Furthermore, various Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) distributions are investigated, which successfully realizes and verifies the clustering analysis of certain point cloud features.

Enterprise target cost control algorithm based on hypercycle model

Considering that the current cost control algorithm has the problems of poor control effect and high cost of manpower and material resources in enterprise cost control, a target cost control algorithm based on Hypercycle model is proposed. By analyzing the relationship between capital, price, technology and target cost control, this paper analyzes the influence of uncertain factors on target cost, and constructs a cost control super cycle model to realize enterprise cost control. Examples show that the algorithm can effectively improve the cost effect of enterprises, and has the practicability of reducing enterprise costs and improving enterprise profits.

Detection of Curved Rows and Gaps in Aerial Images of Sugarcane Field Using Image Processing Techniques

Sugarcane is one of the main crops in the world due to its economic value promoted by the sale of its derivatives, such as bioethanol and sugar. In order to achieve greater economic performance and productivity in the sugarcane field, several digital image processing studies have been conducted on sugarcane field images. However, mapping and measuring gaps in the planting rows are still being performed manually on-site to determine whether to replant the entire area or only the gaps. High cost of time and manpower is required to perform the manual measurement. Based on that, the aim of this study is to present a novel method to detect crop rows and measure gaps in crop fields. Our method is also able to deal with curved crop rows, which is a real problem and substantially limits numerous solutions in practical applications. The proposed method is evaluated using a mosaic of real scene image that was prepared with the support of a small remotely piloted aircraft. Experimental tests showed a low relative error of approximately <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.65$</tex-math> </inline-formula> % compared to manual mapping in the planting regions, even for regions with gaps in the curved crop rows. It means that our proposal can identify and measure crop rows accurately, which enables automated inspections with high-precision measurements.

Experimental Investigation and Model Analysis on a GaN Electrostatic Discharge Clamp

This work carried out the experimental investigation and model analysis on a GaN electrostatic discharge (ESD) clamp, which features a discharge high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) and a voltage divider formed by a lateral field effect rectifier (L-FER) chain and a resistor in series. Firstly, it is found through the experimental investigation, the turn-on voltage (VT) of GaN ESD clamp’s static current is increased with the increase in L-FER’s number and the decrease in resistor’s value. Then, an analytical model is proposed to analyze the dependence of VT on L-FER’s number and resistor’s value. And the analytical model exhibits a good consistency with the experimentally measured results, which confirms the validity of the presented analytical model. Lastly, the dependence of GaN ESD clamp’s transmission line pulsing characteristics on the L-FER’s number and resistor’s value is also analyzed. Similarly, GaN ESD clamp’s triggering voltage is also increased with the increase in L-FER’s number and the decrease in resistor’s value. The experimental investigation and model analysis of this work can be used to direct the design of GaN ESD clamp, and help to save a lot of manpower, material resources and time costs.

Cost Estimation Process of Remote Sensing Satellites

Forecasting cost of satellites is not a recent development in space agencies, they were in practice from the beginning using traditional methods. The attempt to make it simpler, quicker and accurate; established the path to build a model by incorporating statistics, technology and technical knowledge. Building relationships between satellite cost and the technical parameters affecting them directly or indirectly became the basis of the model. The building of the cost model is more vexing than it looks. It requires data to perform regression analysis, which can be linear or nonlinear along with transformations. This paper also specifies the significance of the uncertainty impacting the cost associated with the technical parameters and the method of estimation. The overall model is mapped into three parts; the manpower and facility cost model being the deterministic bottom-up model and the combination of probabilistic and deterministic model for satellite cost.