Main Problems Research Articles

Sustainable educational tourism and the acculturation of international students from the Global South

PurposeThe aim of this study is to understand the acculturation experiences of international students in order to maximize their academic and social experiences which, in turn, can facilitate the development of sustainable educational tourism in the host country.Design/methodology/approachUsing a qualitative methodology and semi-structured interview techniques, 40 international postgraduate tourism students from the Global South were interviewed.FindingsThe findings in this study demonstrated that the main problems faced by these students are inadequate funds and language difficulties.Originality/valueThis study highlighted the fact that although the number of international students is growing all over the world, for most of the students from poorer parts of the world, being an international student is fraught with difficulties. It also demonstrated that although acculturation stress is a serious concern, lack of adequate funding assumes greater importance for students from a poor background.

Analysis of Physical Tourism Tickets: Can Security Printing be Used?

Selling physical tickets at tourist destinations is often a problem in the world of tourism. The number of brokers and fake tickets is always the main problem. Physical tickets are very easy to counterfeit and very easy to distribute to irresponsible brokers. As a result, many tourists are deceived and often have to pay twice or even more just because they bought fake tickets. This research analyzes the problems caused by physical tickets and analyzes alternative security printing solutions that can be applied to ticketing systems using descriptive qualitative research methods. The results of this research are that ticketing using security printing will require greater costs and still pose a risk of ticket counterfeiting. Security printing might have benefits if it were given more value, such as embossing for braille letters aimed at blind tourists. However, for greater benefits, digital ticketing will have a smaller risk of counterfeiting and have greater profits.

A Disciplinary Responsibility by the New Labor Legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan

The article is dedicated to the study of legal regulation of the institution of disciplinary responsibility and identifies its main problems. The expediency of separation of general and special disciplinary responsibility is substantiated. The article analyzes disciplinary responsibility as a type of judicial responsibility, сoncept of labor discipline, disciplinary offense, systematic and a single flagrant violation by the worker of his labor duties, peculiarities of the application of disciplinary sanctions. There were developed both theoretical proposals and proposals for amending legislation on the legal regulation of disciplinary responsibility.

Children with disabilities during the COVID-19 pandemic: medical and social comparative study

Background. The COVID-19 pandemic is a global challenge to States and health systems. The pandemic and its consequences can have a devastating impact on the health and development of children, especially those in vulnerable situations — children with disabilities.The aim of the study is a medical and social assessment of the effect of the COVID—19 pandemic and its consequences on families with children with disabilities.Methods. A descriptive study using the Google forms platform was conducted using the cross-sectional method. Two groups of parents of children aged 0–17 years with disabilities (group 1) and without disabilities (group 2) who apply to a medical organization for preventive examinations were interviewed.Results and discussion. A total of 175 electronic questionnaires were received. Parents from 46 regions of Russia participated in the survey. A significant majority of respondents were women — 172 people (98%), 3 men (2%). More than half of the respondents are residents of the megalopolis. The study showed that the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on the health and education of children and on the lifestyle and families welfare in general. It was revealed that the financial situation of many families who took part in the study worsened, which affected the living conditions of children. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the health care system was being rebuilt taking into account new tasks to counteract dangerous infection, which was reflected in changes in the provision of medical care to children, and in some cases this led to a deterioration of their health. A significant number of parents who participated in the study believe that changes in the organization of medical care during the pandemic had a negative impact on their child’s health. Among the main health problems, parents highlight delays and cancellations of medical consultations, difficulties in obtaining urgent care and problems with drug provision. Among the main health problems, parents highlight delays and cancellations of medical consultations, difficulties in obtaining emergency care and problems with drug provision. The study shows that families with disabled children have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic to a greater extent than families raising children without chronic health problems. If the deterioration of the financial situation is almost equally revealed in both groups, then problems related to medical care and education have a more noticeable impact on families with a child with a disability. The obtained results should be taken into account in times of new challenges when developing measures of state support for families with children, especially with children with disabilities. At the same time, it is important to pay primary attention to the organization of medical care for children (continuity of planned medical care for the child population and rehabilitation actions) and educational services (providing online learning opportunities for the child, taking into account individual ones).Conclusion. The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences have had a negative impact on the standard and quality of life of people, especially families with children. The pandemic has had a significant adverse impact on the health and development of children, especially children with disabilities. The study showed a decrease in the financial situation of families, problems with children receiving medical care, difficulties in education, especially with regard to specialized pedagogical classes with disabled children, during the pandemic. According to the study, in order to prevent the negative impact of the pandemic, it is proposed not only to provide financial support to families, but also to maintain access to the educational process with the provision of the required devices, as well as the possibility of receiving medical care for children, especially children with disabilities, including planned.

Research on the influence factors of sustainable development of plateau characteristic agriculture based on DEMATEL and AISM combined model.

Under the background of the continuous progress of China's agricultural reform, the development of characteristic agriculture is an important field of agricultural development in the country and even the world. Yunnan has unique advantages in geography, location, climate, and human resources, and has unique conditions for the development of agriculture with plateau characteristic. However, the sustainable development of agriculture with plateau characteristic is affected and restricted by many factors. How to promote the sustainable development of agriculture with plateau characteristic is an important research topic, and it is also the main purpose of this study. Therefore, through literature analysis and investigation, this study studies the advantages and disadvantages, development status, main problems, countermeasures and suggestions, macro development direction, and theoretical research methods of characteristic agriculture in the Yunnan plateau. This paper analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of the Decision-making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and the Adversarial Interpretation Structure Modeling Method (AISM) and proposes to combine the two models to make up for each other and improve the accuracy of model analysis. On this basis, a set of identification and evaluation systems of factors affecting the sustainable development of agriculture with plateau characteristic is established, which can comprehensively and accurately identify and evaluate various influencing factors, and provide a scientific basis for the sustainable development of agriculture with plateau characteristic. Finally, combined with the relevant statistical data of Yunnan Province from 2009 to 2020 and many results calculated by the model, the factors affecting the sustainable development of agriculture with plateau characteristic were comprehensively analyzed. The results show that transportation, environment, and insurance support factors are the root factors that affect the sustainable development of agriculture with plateau characteristic, while the regional economy, scientific and technological support, and the development of agricultural enterprises are of high importance. Financial support, the level of agricultural mechanization, the quality of labor, and other factors can not be ignored. Finally, according to the results of the analysis, the corresponding policy recommendations are put forward to provide a reference for the sustainable development of plateau characteristic agriculture in Yunnan Province.

Investment and construction project management system with the use of building information modeling

One of the key principles of the construction industry development until 2030 is the transition to building information modeling at all stages of the life cycle of the capital construction object. The process of digital transformation not only affects and changes the final product, but also requires a full-fledged re-engineering of the company's internal processes.Purpose: The aim of this paper is to conduct the systems analysis of construction stage management within the framework of investment and construction project realization in the conditions of digital transformation.Research findings: The model of the life cycle management system of the capital construction object is developed using basis the information model.Value: Two main problems are outlined, that must be solved to implement the developed management system into practice.

Distributed arithmetic-FIR filter design using Approximate Karatsuba Multiplier and VLCSA

In this manuscript, a High Throughput and Low Latency DA-FIR filter design is integrated with Approximate Karatsuba Multiplier (AKM) and Variable Latency Carry Skip Adder (VLCSA) is proposed for the noise removal application in SDR. In this design, an AKM and VLCSA are considered to decrease the count of partial products on DA framework, although no multiplication is clearly performed. Thus, an important reduction is accomplished under accumulation circuits. The main execution problem of the DA system is the size of lookup table (LUT) increases exponentially through the length of inner product. To further diminish the memory complexity, approximate DA architectures depending truncation approach are needed. Partial products on DA are created through truncating least significant bits (LSBs) of inputs. The proposed hybrid technique lessens a count of LUTs by truncating the least significant bits of input operands. To further reduce the latency, this manuscript deals with one of the fastest multipliers, namely Approximate Karatsuba Multiplier employed for accumulation of partial products. The proposed design is performed in Verilog using Xilinx 14.5 ISE simulation. The experimental performances of the proposed DA-FIR-Hyb AKE-VLCSA filter is evaluated under lower delay, lower static power and compared with the existing filters.

Enhancing security for physical layer communication in RIS-aided MIMO-NOMA systems in the presence of an eavesdropper

This paper investigates the potential of leveraging a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) in the multiple-input multiple-output non-orthogonal multiple access (MIMO-NOMA) wireless communication systems. In fact, NOMA improves spectral efficiency (SE) through power domain utilization, and RIS enhances the system performance by manipulating the propagation environment. In this paper, we investigate the physical layer security (PLS) of a RIS-aided MIMO-NOMA system serving two users in the presence of an eavesdropper (EV), where the channel state information (CSI) of the EV is unknown for the BS. To address the security challenge, we utilize secrecy outage probability (SOP) and minimize it by optimizing the RIS’s phase shift matrix, the beamforming vector, and the power allocation coefficients. Due to the non-convexity of the main optimization problem, we decompose the initial problem into three subproblems, and then, we propose an iterative approach to determine the unknown parameters alternately. The first subproblem involves obtaining the optimal beamforming vector and phase shift matrix using the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) method, which introduces high complexity. As an alternative, another algorithm is proposed based on the duality of the optimization problem, offering lower complexity and better accuracy for high-dimensional optimization problems. In this algorithm, the successive convex approximation (SCA) technique is employed to achieve the optimum phase shift matrix, and the stochastic gradient (SG) approach is used to determine the beamforming vector. Furthermore, the paper establishes the optimal values of power allocation coefficients by minimizing the difference between the SOPs of the two users. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed power allocation coefficients scheme significantly enhances system performance compared to the existing fixed power allocation coefficients scheme.

Cancer Drug Resistance: Targeting Proliferation or Programmed Cell Death.

The development of resistance to chemotherapy is one of the main problems for effective cancer treatment. Drug resistance may result from disturbances in two important physiological processes-cell proliferation and cell death. Importantly, both processes characterize alterations in cell metabolism, the level of which is often measured using MTT/MTS assays. To examine resistance to chemotherapy, different cancer cell lines are usually used for the in vitro modulation of developing resistance. However, after the creation of resistant cell lines, researchers often have difficulty in starting investigations of the mechanisms of insensitivity. In the first stage, researchers should address the question of whether the drug resistance results from a depression of cell proliferation or an inhibition of cell death. To simplify the choice of research strategy, we have suggested a combination of different approaches which reveal the actual mechanism. This combination includes rapid and high-throughput methods such as the MTS test, the LIVE/DEAD assay, real-time cell metabolic analysis, and Western blotting. To create chemoresistant tumor cells, we used four different cancer cell lines of various origins and utilized the most clinically relevant pulse-selection approach. Applying a set of methodological approaches, we demonstrated that three of them were more capable of modulating proliferation to avoid the cytostatic effects of anti-cancer drugs. At the same time, one of the studied cell lines developed resistance to cell death, overcoming the cytotoxic action.

Raising Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change in Energy and Food Sectors of Egypt

It's highly probable that climate change will impact food security on a global, regional, and local scale. Climate change can disrupt food availability, reduce access to food, and affect food quality. Accordingly, climate change’s impacts on both the agricultural sector reflected on food security and pose a serious threat to sustainable development. Furthermore, the total energy demand of Egypt is marked by an exponential growth of demand on electricity, at a pace much faster than that of GDP, of primary energy consumption and of population mainly due to a doubling up of the consumptions of Egypt. The expected development of the industrial sector, the accelerated access to electricity, and the improvement of standards of living (directly connected with the consumption of the residential sector) are the reasons for these consumption upsurges. The different components of climatic change such as projected increases in temperatures, changes in precipitation patterns, changes in extreme weather events, and reductions in water availability may all result in reduced agricultural productivity and may cause energy consumption upsurges. The main problem pertaining to climatic change and climatic variability in Egypt and even in some parts of the Mediterranean Basin is that systematic climate observation programs are, at present, inadequate to permit reliable assessment, quantification and prediction of climatic conditions and their impacts. A more accurate assessments of regional climate variability and change and their related environmental and socio-economic impacts are highly needed.

PERLINDUNGAN HUKUM ATAS CIPTAAN LOGO PROVINSI PAPUA BARAT MENURUT UNDANG-UNDANG HAK CIPTA

The West Papua Province logo drawn by Pieter Mambor as an order from the Government of West Papua Provincial, Abraham Octavianus Atururi. However, the West Papua Provincial Government does not provide compensation to Pieter Mambor as the creator of the logo image. The main problem in this articles is how is the legal protection of the creation of the West Papua Province logo based on Law No. 28 of 2014 on Copyright? and whether the decision of the Makassar Commercial Court Number: 3/Pdt.Sus-HKI/Cipta/2022/PN Niaga Mks is accordance Law No. 28 of 2014 on Copyright? This research is normative type, descriptive nature, the main data is secondary data supported by interviews, data collection methods with literature studies, analyzed qualitatively and conclusions are drawn using deductive logic. The result of the research is the legal protection of the creation of the West Papua Province logo which is included in the category of fine art images regulated in Article 40 paragraph (1) of the UUHC and Decision 3/Pdt.Sus-HKI/Cipta/2022/PN Niaga Mks is not accordance with Article 9 paragraph (2) of Law No. 28 of 2014 concerning Copyright. The conclusion is that the logo of Papua province is included in the creation protected by copyright.

Synthesis of spherical CaO pellets incorporated with Mg, Y, and Ce inert carriers for CO2 capture.

Sintering and elutriation are two main problems of the calcium looping process for high-temperature CO2 capture. In the process of CO2 capture, the operation temperature is generally higher than the Taman temperature, resulting in the agglomeration and sintering of the sorbents. The traditional sorbent powers need to be granulated for practical application in a circulating fluidized bed to avoid elutriation. By using a new agar-assisted technology to granulate CaO powder incorporated with Mg, Y, and Ce inert supports, the problems of sintering and elutriation can be mitigated within one step. The incorporated inert supports are uniformly dispersed in the CaO/CaCO3 particles as an inert scaffold, and the inert scaffold is used as a skeleton to resist sintering, alleviate its agglomeration phenomenon, and keep the specific surface area to a certain extent. The Ce-incorporated CaO pellets have been proven to exhibit the best carbonation conversion and sorption capacity. The sorption capacity of 10% CeO2-incorporated CaO pellets reached 0.574 g CO2/g sorbent, more than 43% higher than that of the pure CaO pellets. In addition, the effects of the solid-liquid ratio during the preparation stage on CO2 performance were also investigated, demonstrating that a solid-liquid ratio of 1:5 was the optimal ratio to produce satisfying sorbents. The mitigated sintering and achieved spherical CaO pellets greatly promote the practical application of the calcium looping process for CO2 capture.

Transformer-based anomaly detection in P-LEO constellations: A dynamic graph approach

Successful management of large space systems, such as the most recent Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (P-LEO) constellations, demands an increased level of autonomy and irregular behavior detection capability. Existing techniques for satellite network management rely on monitoring satellites individually, potentially failing to capture events shared across multiple units. In this work, we propose a pipeline for identifying anomalous connections in proliferated satellite networks. Our pipeline relies on representing a satellite constellation as a dynamic graph. Dynamic graphs can be conveniently exploited to represent P-LEO networks, as they allow to capture meaningful structural and temporal correlations. Such spatial and temporal information are first projected into an embedding space; next, this encoded representation is processed by a transformer-encoder network for the anomaly detection task. We conduct extensive analyses of the main problem parameters, including the temporal horizon, the structure of the graph, and the size of the constellation. To assess the general performance of the method, we perform a Monte Carlo analysis on 960 ground node pair connections, providing empirical evidence of the algorithm’s generalization capability. The obtained results encourage the extension of the method to more complex, realistic modeling and kindred applications such as the on-edge detection problem.

Design and analysis of adaptive control systems: Adaptive control algorithms using machine learning

A growing field of research is the use of adaptive control algorithms with machine learning techniques like Q-learning and SARSA. With prospective applications in robotics, healthcare, and other fields, this interdisciplinary method strives to combine the stability and robustness of conventional control systems with the self-learning skills of reinforcement learning. Making sure that systems are stable and that learning occurs effectively is the main research problem. This paper demonstrates the stability and convergence of existing adaptive control algorithms when integrating with machine learning. There are mainly four primary methods of control algorithms: reinforcement learning, neutral network, support vector machine and deep learning. Reinforcement learning is the main focus of this paper. Data efficiency, robustness, and generalization are the main problems with reinforcement learning. Q-learning and SARSA (State, Action, Reward, State, Action) are two algorithms for reinforcement learning. The research will be done by analyzing these two algorithms based on existing material and the actual application of these two algorithms. SARSA is believed to be more safe as its on-policy methodology, and Q-learning is believed to be more proactive as its off-policy methodology.

Reducing the Cost of 3D Metal Printing Using Selective Laser Melting (SLM) Technology in the Manufacture of a Drill Body by Reinforcing Thin-Walled Shell Forms with Metal-Polymers

This article describes the technology for manufacturing a metal composite structure of a metal-cutting tool body. The main problem with using metal 3D-printing is its prohibitively high cost. The initial data for carrying out finite element calculations are presented, in particular, the calculation and justification of the selected loads on the drill body arising from metal-cutting forces. The described methodology for designing a digital model of a metal-cutting tool for the purpose of its further production using SLM 3D metal printing methods facilitates the procurement of a digital model characterized by a reduced weight and volume of material. The described design technology involves the production of a thin-walled outer shell that forms the external technological surfaces necessary for the drill body, as well as internal structural elements formed as a result of topological optimization of the product shape. Much attention in this article is paid to the description of the technology for filling internal cavities with a viscous metal polymer, formed as a result of the topological optimization of the original model. Due to this design approach, it is possible to reduce the volume of 3D metal printing by 32%, which amounts to more than USD 135 in value terms.

A multi-source subdomain adaptation fault diagnosis method based on unidirectional movement of the target domain

The traditional domain adaptation method for fault diagnosis of axial fans faces two main problems: (1) source domain moves to target domain makes the source feature distribution changed; (2) the narrow decision boundary of source domain features leads to misclassification of target samples. Therefore, a multi-source subdomain adaption fault diagnosis method based on unidirectional movement of the target domain is proposed. The method uses triplet-center loss to improve the discrimination of target domain samples, which reducing intra-class distance and increasing inter-class distance of source domain features; extracting the domain invariant feature of the target samples by asymmetric adversarial and improved subdomain feature distance measurement; the cosine similarity is used to align the classifiers’ outputs of different source domains; the mean value of all classifiers’ outputs are used as pseudo labels, and the pseudo labels are optimized by maximum entropy to improve their reliability. A large number of experiments show that this method has a significant effect on solving the problem of cross conditions fault diagnosis.

Scale Modular Test Platform for the Characterization of PD Measuring Systems Using HFCT Sensors.

Today, online partial discharge (PD) measurements are common practice to assess the condition status of dielectrics in high-voltage (HV) electrical grids. However, when online PD measurements are carried out in electrical facilities, several disadvantages must be considered. Among the most important are high levels of changing electrical noise and interferences, signal phase couplings (cross-talk phenomena), and the simultaneous presence of various defects and difficulties in localizing and identifying them. In the last few decades, various PD-measuring systems have been developed to deal with these inconveniences and try to achieve the adequate supervision of electrical installations. In the state of the art, one of the main problems that electrical companies and technology developers face is the difficulty in characterizing the measuring system's functionalities in laboratory setups or in real-world facilities, where simulated or real defects must be detected. This is mainly due to the complexity and costs that the laboratory setups entail and the fact that the facilities are permanently in service. Furthermore, in the latter scenario, owners cannot assign facilities to carry out the tests, which could cause irreversible damage. Additionally, with the aforementioned installations, a comparison of results over time in various locations is not possible, and noise conditions cannot be controlled to perform the characterizations in a correct way. To deal with the problems indicated, in this article, an affordable scale modular test platform that simulates an HV installation is presented, where real on-site PD measuring conditions are simulated and controlled. In this first development, the HV installation comprises a cable system connected at both ends to a gas-insulated substation (GIS). As the most common acquisition technique in online applications is based on the placement of high-frequency current transformer (HFCT) sensors in the grounding cables of facilities, the test platform is mainly adapted to carry out measurements with this type of sensor. The designed and developed test platform was validated to assess its features and the degree of convergence with a real installation, showing the convenience of its use for the appropriate and standardized characterization of PD-measuring systems.

DAMPAK PEMBANGUNAN BANDAR UDARA BLIMBINGSARI TERHADAP SEKTOR PARIWISATA DI KABUPATEN BANYUWANGI TAHUN 2011-2017

This study discusses the impact of the development of Blimbingsari Airport on the tourism sector in Banyuwangi Regency from 2011 to 2017. The main problem studied is how the impact of the development of Blimbingsari Airport on the tourism sector in Banyuwangi Regency from 2011 to 2017. The purpose of this study is to explain what it is about which received influence from the development of Blimbingsari Airport. This study uses historical research methods. The results of this study indicate that Banyuwangi's tourism potential can develop with the support of the local government through airport development policies. The number of tourists and the number of passengers at Blimbingsari Airport from 2011-2017 has continued to increase. Many local and foreign tourists visit Banyuwangi to take part in activities in the form of events or enjoy the natural beauty and local arts in Banyuwangi. Foreign tourists, of course, come to Banyuwangi using air transportation. Thus, Blimbingsari Airport can be used as a promotional medium to reach Banyuwangi as an international tourism industry area.
 Keywords: Blimbingsari airport; economy; Banyuwangi regency; tourism

Removal of heavy metals from wastewater using reverse osmosis

This study presents an overview of and innovations in reverse osmosis (RO) membrane processes for rejecting charged metal ions in wastewater in relation to the main problems associated with purification methods. It also explains the emergence of nanomaterials and the different methods applied for RO membrane modification to improve performance. Membrane regeneration and retentate management are also considered. The study concludes with an economic feasibility study for the industrial scale-up of the methodology.

Międzykulturowa interwencja. Dawid Rogacz rozmawia z Q. Edwardem Wangiem

In this interview conducted at the XXIII International Congress of Historical Sciences in Po-znan, Q. Edward Wang (Professor of History at Rowan University in the US and Changjiang Professor of History at Beijing University in China) addresses the main problems in global and comparative historiography. Elaborating upon the background and impact of his scientific con-tributions, Prof. Wang discusses the modernization of Chinese historical writing, the challenges of comparative historiography, the status of historical studies today, and the future of historical theory. In addition, he refers to his recent studies in culinary history as instances of a new model of global historiography.