Flexible Procedure Research Articles

Insightful Visualization of Remote Sensing Images

Numerous dimensions exist in remote sensing imagery (RSI) dataset, necessitating visualization to display and enable human analysis. In order to visualize, dimension reduction (DR) is performed to decrease the dimensionality to two or three. This letter proposes a novel DR technique called nonlinear local linear embedding (NLLE), where the objective is to obtain an accurate visualization of RSI datasets. NLLE reduces the high dimension of large datasets to a space with low dimensionality, preserving the neighborhood relationship between points in the original space. When compared to other well-known DR techniques, NLLE’s flexible procedure increases the likelihood of achieving effective RSI visualization.

The Role Of Organizational Creativity In Achieving Strategic superiority Through Knowledge Sharing An Exploratory Study Of The Opinions Of A Sample Of Managers In The Kufa Cement Factory

Purpose: This study aims to determine the influence relationship between its variables in organizational creativity (sensitivity to problems, originality, flexibility, fluency, risk and challenge) in achieving strategic superiority (circles of influence, competitive pressure and competitive formation) through mediating knowledge exchange (individual dimension, organizational dimension) The technological dimension), and to identify the most prominent obstacles that prevent this, and the importance of the study lies in recognizing the extent of interest of the administrative leaders in the laboratory and the level of their abilities in the field of organizational creativity skills, strategic excellence and knowledge exchange.
 Theoretical framework:The study touched on the theoretical side of the variables of the study and reviewed the most important concepts related to the variable of organizational creativity, knowledge sharing and strategic excellence.The problem of the study lies in not showing it in the Kufa Cement Factory’s vision of the extent of the impact of the presence of organizational innovation in achieving strategic excellence through knowledge participation,
 Design/methodology/approach:where the questionnaire was used as a tool for collecting the necessary data and information, and an intended sample of (120) represented by (higher departments, was tested, and heads of departments, and managers of departments and units in Kufa Cement Factory), and the descriptive analytical method was mainly used in the presentation and analysis of the research.
 Findings: The information was interpreted, and a set of statistical methods were relied on, such as confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling method to measure the effect relationship, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, path analysis, and Pearson's relationship through statistical programs. (SPSS v.24; Amos v.23).
 Research, Practical & Social implications-:Among the most prominent results of the study, the laboratory management's interest in improving and developing the capabilities of workers, through the establishment of training courses for laboratory workers to improve and develop its products. His influential competitors in the sphere of influence, in light of his limited pursuit of market domination in front of them, and the ability of the factory to search for renewable ways and entrances to develop the strategic advantage of the company.
 Originality/value:The freedom to find successful solutions that represent a serious response to change, and the adoption of flexible procedures through which the laboratory management achieves its goals away from specific job responsibilities.

Digital Workplace Transformation: Innovative Approach After Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract COVID-19 had undoubtedly speeded up adoption of digital technologies. Most of the theoreticians agree that changes that happened in the pandemic period would not happen in the next several years or even decades. There is almost no business operation that has not been affected by the pandemic, from customer relation and sales to supply chain. It influenced different business sectors leaving permanent change and making a significant proportion of organizations working in at least hybrid mode: combining digital and traditional pre-pandemic ways of working. COVID-19 had significantly changed the workplace and way of working. Workplace has shifted to digital or at least hybrid and employees and companies have adopted new ways of working, including usage of digital technologies but also accepting more agile and flexible procedures and rules. The research community has followed this phenomenon and tried to provide best possible recommendation to it accordance to recognized research methods. The paper provides a systematic literature review of the most significant scientific and industry publication in the years after the pandemic start. It is based on Kitchenham methodology of the systematic review with selected publication from recognized bibliographic databases. First part provides general effects of the pandemic to digital transformation of businesses all over the globe, mostly connected to analysis of the employees’ workplace preference. The second part is focused on digital workplace transformation and presents key theoretical and professional findings in the post-pandemic workplace. This part is consisted of the preview of benefits of the digital workplace transformation, identification of critical success factors and the most significant challenges of the process.

Communal Labor in Ecovillages: Contradictions, Impasses, and Possibilities within the Notion of Self-sufficiency.

Our goal is to outline the concept of communal labor in ecovillages of Brazil. To do that, we considered three elements: (1) political orientation for self-sufficiency; (2) technical-productive orientation in self-managed work and in plural economic practices; and (3) socio-environmental orientation centered on the recovery of biodiversity. We collected data in four ecovillages for 49days, through a methodological path of inspiration ethnography with fieldnote and participant observation, followed by remote monitoring for 22months. Our option was for flexible procedure to collect complex dynamics of management and routines of life by dialogues between researchers and informants. The results show that communal labor emerged in ecovillages as a resistance to market-centric society, although dependent on it incidentally. If, on the one hand, there are tensions and contradictions, on the other they reveal a strong organizational practice that shows possibilities and ways of redefining the relationships among human beings, and between collective organizations and ecosystems, by mitigating elements of alienation on values that inspire human emancipation.

Enhancing CO2 conversion with plasma reactors in series and O2 removal

In this work, we take a crucial step towards the industrial readiness of plasma-based CO2 conversion. We present a stepwise method to study plasma reactors in series as a first approach to a recycle flow. By means of this procedure, the CO2 conversion is enhanced by a factor of 3, demonstrating that a single-pass plasma treatment performs far below the optimal capacity of the reactor. Furthermore, we explore the effect of O2 in the mixture with our flexible procedure. Addition of O2 in the mixture has a clear detrimental effect on the conversion, in agreement with other experiments in atmospheric pressure plasmas. O2 removal is however highly beneficial, demonstrating a conversion per pass that is 1.6 times higher than the standard procedure. Indeed, extracting one of the products prevents recombination reactions. Based on these insights, we discuss opportunities for further improvements, especially in the field of specialised separation techniques.

Long-term stability of a life insurer’s balance sheet

In this paper, we devise a stochastic asset–liability management (ALM) model for a life insurance company and analyze its influence on the balance sheet within a low-interest rate environment. In particular, a flexible procedure for the generation of insurers’ compressed contract portfolios that respects the given biometric structure is presented, extending the existing literature on stochastic ALM modeling. The introduced balance sheet model is in line with the principles of double-entry bookkeeping as required in accounting. We further focus on the incorporation of new business, i.e. the addition of newly concluded contracts and thus of insured in each period. Efficient simulations are obtained by integrating new policies into existing cohorts according to contract-related criteria. We provide new results on the consistency of the balance sheet equations. In extensive simulation studies for different scenarios regarding the business form of today’s life insurers, we utilize these to analyze the long-term behavior and the stability of the components of the balance sheet for different asset–liability approaches. Finally, we investigate the robustness of two prominent investment strategies against crashes in the capital markets, which lead to extreme liquidity shocks and thus threaten the insurer’s financial health.

Flexible and robust procedure for subgroup inference

In subgroup analysis of clinical trials and precision medicine, it is important to assess the causal effect of a new treatment against an existing one and classify the new treatment favorable subgroup if it exists. As the original randomization does not apply to comparisons between subgroups, for unbiased estimate the causal inference method will be used, in particular the doubly robust procedure, in which a propensity score model and a regression model need to be specified. As long as one of the models is correctly specified, the causal effect will be estimated unbiased. However, it is known that any subjectively specified model more or less deviates from the true one, and so the doubly robust procedure may still not be robust. To overcome this issue, we apply a recently proposed method to allow the identification of subgroups and causal inference in subgroups. The model is a semiparametric robust and flexible procedure, in which both the propensity score model and the regression model are semiparametric, with monotone constraint on the nonparametric parts. Simulation studies are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method and compare some existing methods. Then the method is applied to analyze a real clinical trial data.

Inference and uncertainty quantification of stochastic gene expression via synthetic models.

Estimating uncertainty in model predictions is a central task in quantitative biology. Biological models at the single-cell level are intrinsically stochastic and nonlinear, creating formidable challenges for their statistical estimation which inevitably has to rely on approximations that trade accuracy for tractability. Despite intensive interest, a sweet spot in this trade-off has not been found yet. We propose a flexible procedure for uncertainty quantification in a wide class of reaction networks describing stochastic gene expression including those with feedback. The method is based on creating a tractable coarse-graining of the model that is learned from simulations, a synthetic model, to approximate the likelihood function. We demonstrate that synthetic models can substantially outperform state-of-the-art approaches on a number of non-trivial systems and datasets, yielding an accurate and computationally viable solution to uncertainty quantification in stochastic models of gene expression.

ANALYSIS OF ELECTROMAGNETIC PROCESSES IN THE CONVERTER OF THREE-PHASE VOLTAGE INTO A CONSTANT WITH SEVENTEEN VOLTAGE REGULATION

The urgency of the work is due to the need to use different methods of calculating steady-state and transient processes in electrical circuits with semiconductor switches. The need to use these methods is determined by the feasibility of their use to achieve high energy, dynamic, technical and operational characteristics of semiconductor converters (SCC). The aim of the research is to study new models of converters. The work is devoted to the questions of improving effectiveness of electric power semiconductor transducer devices. The process of end-to-end design of semiconductor power reformers, like any other electronic device, includes design stages at the structural, functional, circuit, component, design and technological levels. The feature of descending designing is the opportunity of implementation of structural and functional creation in advanced environment automated schematic designing. It has been offered the new way of such creation, methods of ascending designing have been developed and realized. Principles of analog macro models construction for power elements and control system devices of semiconductor converters, which are intended for hierarchical designing with multilevel modeling by uniform software, are considered. The developed macro models and new methods of the analysis allow to reduce expenses of time at modeling. Flexible procedure of transition from one kind of model to another allows to combine profundity of the analysis with its comprehensiveness and choose alternately exactness or quickness of modeling as required. The task of developing methods for designing transducers by numerical methods and forming libraries of macro models of basic elements and devices of transducers of various levels of detail from structural level models to functional and circuit macro models is quite relevant, from physical to macro model formation is quite relevant. Solving these problems will allow computer modeling at different levels of design (structural, functional and circuit) by different numerical methods.

Optimal Weighted Multiple-Testing Procedure for Clinical Trials

This paper describes a new method for testing randomized clinical trials with binary outcomes, which combines the O’Brien and Fleming (1979) multiple-testing procedure with optimal allocations and unequal weighted samples simultaneously. The O’Brien and Fleming method of group sequential testing is a simple and effective method with the same Type I error and power as a fixed one-stage chi-square test, with the option to terminate early if one treatment is clearly superior to another. This study modified the O’Brien and Fleming procedure, resulting in a more flexible new procedure, where the optimal allocation assists in allocating more subjects to the winning treatment without compromising the integrity of the study, while unequal weighting allows for different samples to be chosen for different stages of a trial. The new optimal weighted multiple-testing procedure (OWMP), based on simulation studies, is relatively robust to the added features because it showed a high preference for decreasing the Type I error and maintaining the power. In addition, the procedure was illustrated using simulated and real-life examples. The outcomes of the current study suggest that the new procedure is as effective as the original. However, it is more flexible.

UAV PHOTOGRAMMETRY FOR METRIC EVALUATION OF CONCRETE BRIDGE CRACKS

Abstract. Monitoring cracks opening on concrete bridges is a key aspect for structural health assessment. Digital image processing, combined with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and photogrammetry, allows for non-contact 3D reconstruction of cracks, reducing costs and potential unsafe factors involved in manual inspections. This paper presents a flexible procedure based on UAV photogrammetry for accurate evaluation of cracks geometry, that can be implemented for periodic structural monitoring. Stereo-pair of images, acquired with UAVs close to the cracked surface, are used to build a scaled photogrammetric model through Structure-from-Motion. Cracks are detected on images by image binarization and digital image processing techniques. Thereafter, one single image is used to reconstruct crack 3D geometry, by back-projecting crack image coordinates on a 3D model of the object. This can be built from the current stereo-pair of images, or based on an existing photogrammetric model, in the case of a periodic monitoring set-up. Crack width is accurately estimated in 3D world. The procedure is tested and evaluated in a case study, obtaining millimetric accurate results, which is in line with the average ground sample distance of the images employed. Results highlight the potentials of UAVs and photogrammetry not only for bridge inspections and damages localization, but also for accurately evaluating cracks geometry and helping structural engineers to assess structure health conditions.

Emerging Trends in N‐Tosylhydrazone Mediated Transition‐Metal‐Free Reactions

AbstractThis review is based on the recent synthetic advancements of N‐tosylhydrazone under metal‐free conditions for the construction of nitrogen‐containing heterocycles. N‐Tosylhydrazones, an emerging building block in current organic chemistry offer moderate and flexible procedures through the carbene intermediates for the formation of C−C and carbon‐heteroatom bonds. N‐Tosylhydrazones are the derivatives of the aldehyde/keto group which act as carbene source, diazo precursors, and alternative of the respective carbonyl group. The key features of the N‐tosylhydrazone chemistry involve selective, controllable, one‐pot synthesis, good functional group tolerance, and metal‐free reactions with a wide scope of substrates. The current study includes mechanistic features, synthetic applications, substrate scope, limitation, and some additional reactions like electrosynthesis, regioselective, chemoselective, annulation, 1,3‐dipolar, and intermolecular cycloaddition.

Fourier-Engineered Plasmonic Lattice Resonances.

Resonances in optical systems are useful for many applications, such as frequency comb generation, optical filtering, and biosensing. However, many of these applications are difficult to implement in optical metasurfaces because traditional approaches for designing multiresonant nanostructures require significant computational and fabrication efforts. To address this challenge, we introduce the concept of Fourier lattice resonances (FLRs) in which multiple desired resonances can be chosen a priori and used to dictate the metasurface design. Because each resonance is supported by a distinct surface lattice mode, each can have a high quality factor. Here, we experimentally demonstrate several metasurfaces with flexibly placed resonances (e.g., at 1310 and 1550 nm) and Q-factors as high as 800 in a plasmonic platform. This flexible procedure requires only the computation of a single Fourier transform for its design, and is based on standard lithographic fabrication methods, allowing one to design and fabricate a metasurface to fit any specific, optical-cavity-based application. This work represents a step toward the complete control over the transmission spectrum of a metasurface.

Bridging the Gap between Physical and Circuit Analysis for Variability-Aware Microwave Design: Modeling Approaches

Process-induced variability is a growing concern in the design of analog circuits, and in particular for monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs) targeting the 5G and 6G communication systems. The RF and microwave (MW) technologies developed for the deployment of these communication systems exploit devices whose dimension is now well below 100 nm, featuring an increasing variability due to the fabrication process tolerances and the inherent statistical behavior of matter at the nanoscale. In this scenario, variability analysis must be incorporated into circuit design and optimization, with ad hoc models retaining a direct link to the fabrication process and addressing typical MMIC nonlinear applications like power amplification and frequency mixing. This paper presents a flexible procedure to extract black-box models from accurate physics-based simulations, namely TCAD analysis of the active devices and EM simulations for the passive structures, incorporating the dependence on the most relevant fabrication process parameters. We discuss several approaches to extract these models and compare them to highlight their features, both in terms of accuracy and of ease of extraction. We detail how these models can be implemented into EDA tools typically used for RF and MMIC design, allowing for fast and accurate statistical and yield analysis. We demonstrate the proposed approaches extracting the black-box models for the building blocks of a power amplifier in a GaAs technology for X-band applications.

Compliance with the flexible endoscope handling procedure at the Endoscopy Department of the Central Highlands General Hospital, in 2021.

The study was conducted to describe the current situation in the implementation of the flexible endoscope handling procedure at the Endoscopy Department of the Central Highlands General Hospital, in 2021. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study, using quantitative research on 295 opportunities to perform the processing procedure of the flexible endoscopic through observation using a checklist built on the tube handling guidelines flexible endoscope of the Ministry of Health. Findings: Results showed that the overall correct implementation rate for the whole process is 85.8%. The incorrect steps are step 1 (pre-clean), step 2 (tube removal), step 3 (leak check), step 5 (tube test), step 7 (coating and drying) with the ratios are 2.8%; 1.7%; 8.1%; 4.1%; 6.4% respectively. Conclusion: The overall correct performance rate for the entire flexible endoscopic procedure at the Endoscopy department of the Central Highlands General Hospital in 2021 is 85.8%. There are still flaws in the implementation of the process. From this situation, the hospital as well as the Department of Endoscopy have solutions to improve compliance with the procedure for handling flexible endoscopes. Keywords: Compliance with the procedure, flexible endoscope, endoscope handling.

Distributed State Fusion Using Sparse-Grid Quadrature Filter With Application to INS/CNS/GNSS Integration

This paper presents a new methodology of distributed state fusion by using the sparse-grid quadrature filter to deal with the fusion estimation problem for multi-sensor nonlinear systems. In this methodology, the sparse-grid quadrature filter is performed in a distributed manner to process the information at each local node; and subsequently, a distributed state fusion approach based on matrix weighting is established in the sense of mean square error, in which a flexible procedure is developed based on the sparse-grid quadrature rule to calculate the cross-covariances between any two local estimators for multi-sensor nonlinear systems. The proposed methodology of distributed fusion can obtain higher fusion estimation accuracy in a flexible way, leading to improved fusion performance for multi-sensor nonlinear systems. The simulations and experiments in INS/CNS/GNSS (inertial navigation system/celestial navigation system/global navigation satellite system) integration verifies the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

A Framework for Dynamic Configuration of TLS Connections Based on Standards

The Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol is widely used for protecting end-to-end communications between network peers (applications or nodes). However, the administrators usually have to configure parameters (e.g., cryptography algorithms or authentication credentials) to establish TLS connections manually. However, this way of managing security connections becomes infeasible when the number of network peers is high. This paper proposes a TLS management framework that configures and manages TLS connections in a dynamic and autonomous manner. The solution is based on well-known standardized protocols and models that allow providing the necessary configuration parameters to establish a TLS connection between two network nodes. Nowadays, this is required in several application scenarios such as virtual private networks, virtualized network functions, or service function chains. Our framework is based on standard elements of the Software Defined Networking paradigm, widely adopted to provide flexibility to network management, such as for the scenarios aforementioned. The proposed framework has been implemented in a proof of concept to validate the suitability of the proposed solution to manage the dynamic configuration of TLS connections. The experimental results confirm that the implementation of this framework enables an operable and flexible procedure to manage TLS connections between network nodes in different scenarios.

SVRice: An Automated Rice Seed Vigor Classification System via Radicle Emergence Testing Using Image-Processing, Curve-Fitting, and Clustering Methods

Highlights SVRice package: a simple and effective procedure for automatic rice seed vigor classification was verified. The package consists of three important parts: image analysis, curve-fitting, and cluster analysis. Findings provide an effective rice seed vigor classification system that promises to reduce the production costs. Abstract. Rice seed vigor classification is important for seed storage management by seed producers and by farmers while planning their cultivation activities. Field emergence is a direct method of seed vigor testing but is laborious, time-consuming and subjective. This article presents the SVRice package, a simple, cost-efficient, and flexible procedure based on computer image analysis for high-throughput, automatic rice seed vigor classification. SVRice consists of four steps: dynamic imaging, image processing, curve fitting, and clustering. Seed vigor was classified based on radicle emergence indices, such as maximum radicle emergence (MaxRE), mean radicle emergence time (MRET), radicle emergence speed (t50), uniformity of radicle emergence (U7525), and area under the curve of the radicle emergence fitted curve (AUC). Parameters used to classify rice seed vigor, such as MRET, U7525, and t50, were strongly negatively correlated with the saturated salt accelerated aging (SSAA) test. A germination time of 90 h at 25°C was sufficient for effective classification based on SVRice, whereas the SSAA test took approximately 400 h to complete. The SVRice software algorithm was created to be especially suitable for assessment after six months under controlled atmosphere storage (at 15°C and 37% RH in a hermetic bag). The study showed that SVRice could unambiguously classify 40 indica rice samples with different varieties, production years, production sites, storage times, and storage conditions compared with the SSAA test. Findings provide an effective seed vigor classification system that promises to reduce the production costs and encourages competitiveness of seed producers. Keywords: Image analysis, Oryza sativa, Radicle emergence, Seed vigor, SVRice.

Psychological Benefits and Challenges of Ph.D. Entrance Exam Virtual Interviews During COVID-19 Pandemic: Does Gender Play a Role?

This study aimed to investigate the reflections of Iranian students on Ph.D. entrance exam interviews held virtually nationwide during the Pandemic. Two hundred thirty-one Ph.D. applicants were invited to fill out an anonymous online survey designed in Google Forms, 36 out of whom volunteered to participate in follow-up semi-structured interviews. Two ANOVA measures were used to investigate the possible influences of gender and prior virtual interview experience on the applicants’ perceptions. Thematic analysis was also adopted to explore the participants’ attitudes and perceptions toward virtual interviews (VI). Quantitative findings showed that Iranian Ph.D. applicants perceived VI as a flexible and helpful procedure that provided them with satisfactory interpersonal treatment. Still, they did not favor the procedure’s perceived behavioral control and ability to communicate information to perform procedural justice. Moreover, neither their gender nor their prior experience of the virtual interview was a predictor of their perspectives’ discrepancies. The thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed that despite having some cognitive, personal, and financial benefits, VI posed some technical, communicative, and personal challenges. This study provides implications for universities and applicants who will use VI for different purposes in higher education.

Erbium Laser for Skin Surgery: A Single-Center Twenty-Five Years’ Experience

(1) Introduction: The Erbium laser is a very versatile laser system used in dermatology. Its ability to be almost selectively absorbed by water makes it a perfect device for managing various cutaneous skin conditions. (2) Methods: In this paper, we report our twenty-five years’ experience with the Erbium laser. More than three thousand patients were treated for common skin disorders such as flat warts, seborrheic keratosis, xanthelasmas, and scars. (3) Results: A complete response was observed in 89.6%, without significant side effects. Local anesthesia was used in only a tiny percentage of patients. (4) Conclusions: This study confirms that the Erbium laser is a valuable and flexible procedure for laser surgery with excellent safety and short healing times.