Multi-tier Structure Research Articles

Variables and Dynamics of the Middle Eastern System

Background This study explores the transformative impact of three significant events on the Middle Eastern regional system: the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Arab Spring of 2011, and the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. These events have altered the regional balance, leading to an evolving, complex, and multi-polar system. This research assesses the role of both state and non-state actors, examining their influence on the region’s stability and overall structure. Methods Employing a mixed-method approach that combines area studies and international relations (IR) theory, this study examines the regional power dynamics using twelve indicators to assess hard and soft power, including economic, military, and socio-political metrics. The analysis positions regional actors within a multi-tiered structure, evaluating the interplay between internal and external influences to explain the current distribution of power. Results The study finds that the Middle Eastern system has developed into a hierarchical yet anarchic structure, characterized by a competitive and multi-polar power distribution. Although external actors, such as the United States, continue to play pivotal roles, regional powers – including Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and Iran – exert significant influence, leading to an inherently unstable system. This dynamic interplay fosters competition and limits cooperative stability. Conclusion The findings suggest that the Middle Eastern regional system’s volatility is rooted in this unique distribution of power, where continuous struggles among actors contribute to persistent instability. Understanding these dynamics is essential for assessing future developments and potential stability within the region.

Elderly Citizenship Experience under Different Pension Policies: A Comparative Analysis of China and Japan

Abstract: As global population structures change rapidly, the social rights and welfare of the elderly have increasingly become a focal point of societal concern. Pension policies not only address economic issues but also encompass welfare levels, social equity, citizenship rights, and identity. This paper explores the impact of different pension policies on the citizenship experience of the elderly by comparing the pension systems of China and Japan. The study is based on pension policy documents and related data from both countries and employs a comparative social policy analysis. The comparison is conducted conceptually, focusing on the scope, content, and depth of the pension policies in China and Japan, in order to reflect on the elderly's citizenship experience in both nations. The research highlights that Chinas pension policy features a single-tier structure with limited autonomy and marked urban-rural disparities, which restrict the citizenship experience of the elderly. In contrast, Japans retirement policy is characterized by mandatory participation, clear responsibilities, and a multi-tiered structure, providing broader coverage and more comprehensive social rights and a sense of identity for the elderly. However, this system also brings about noticeable class divisions.

STPF-Net: Short-Term Precipitation Forecast Based on a Recurrent Neural Network

Accurate and timely precipitation forecasts are critical in modern society, influencing both economic activity and daily life. While deep learning methods leveraging remotely sensed radar data have become prevalent for precipitation nowcasting, longer-term forecasting remains challenging. This is due to accumulated errors in deep learning models and insufficient information about precipitation systems over longer time horizons. To address these challenges, we introduce the Short-Term Precipitation Forecast Network (STPF-Net), a recurrent neural network designed for longer-term precipitation prediction. STPF-Net uses a multi-tier structure with varying temporal resolutions to mitigate the accumulated errors during longer forecasts. Additionally, its transformer-based module incorporates larger spatial contexts, providing more complete information about precipitation systems. We evaluated STPF-Net on radar data from southeastern China, training separate models for 6 and 12 h forecasts. Quantitative results demonstrate STPF-Net achieved superior accuracy and lower errors compared to benchmark deep learning and numerical weather prediction models. Visualized case studies indicate reasonably coherent 6 h predictions from STPF-Net versus other methods. For 12 h forecasts, while STPF-Net outperformed other models, it still struggled with storm initiation over longer forecasting time.

Creating and sustaining a digital community of practice for quality improvement in South-East Asia during the COVID-19 pandemic

IntroductionEnsuring quality of care in Low and Middle Income countries (LMICs) is challenging. Despite the implementation of various quality improvement (QI) initiatives in public and private sectors, the sustenance of...

Horizontal IoT Platform EMULSION

This article presents an overview of an Internet of Things (IoT) platform design based on a horizontal architectural principle. The goal in applying this principle is to overcome many of the disadvantages associated with the default design approach which, within this context, could be classed as “vertical” in that the IoT system and service are usually designed as stand-alone “silo-like” entities on their own autonomous platform. In a pure sense, each new IoT system and service is a new design ab initio. With the “horizontal principle”, the goal is that in the creation of a new IoT system and service, the provider needs only provide or adapt relevant architectural elements within a horizontal slice of an existing IoT architecture to enable the delivery of the desired IoT service. This article shows how embedding the horizontal principle into an IoT platform design brings the benefits of system design efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility, together with at least the same scalability attributes inherent in the existing platform, an easily accessible adjustment, fine-tuning, and an openness to new use cases and application scenarios. The vision is the enabling of the realization of a potential multipurpose use of the IoT systems and services built on top of such platforms. The article presents a selective survey on the state of the art in IoT domains of application and in IoT platform architectural design solutions and lines of development from a vertical–horizontal categorization perspective. It presents examples of both IoT platform design solution types in use today. Within the context of strongly recommending the application of the horizontal design principle, the multitiered structure of the authors’ own EMULSION IoT platform based on this horizontal principle is presented in detail in the final part of the article.

The Use of a Modelling & Simulation Tier by the EMULSION IoT Platform

This paper presents some design aspects of the EMULSION IoT platform, developed as a typical example of the horizontal IoT platforms. The architectural overview and multi-tiered structure of the platform are described, with special attention being paid to its modelling & simulation tier as a novel architectural element proposed for inclusion in similar IoT platforms. Used to model cyber-physical-social (CPS) objects and IoT services, along with their attributes and temporal/spatial/event characteristics, this tier is also utilized to simulate the actual provision of IoT services in order to determine the optimal configuration of the platform in each particular use case, by solving complex optimization tasks. Examples of such tasks are presented in the paper along with some results obtained to date.

Designing a Heterogeneous Sensor Tier for the EMULSION IoT Platform

The design of a heterogeneous sensor tier for the generic, multi-service, cloud-based, IoT operational platform EMULSION is presented in this paper, along with typical hardware examples and deployment schemas involving different types of sensor sets and monitoring stations for detecting and notifying about the changes occurring in the physical world. Aided by the communication tier, the sensor tier deals also with issues of heterogeneity related to the integration of different IoT things, objects, devices, etc., into EMULSION. The elaborated multi-tiered structure of the platform, allowing much flexibility of the service provisioning along with easy scalability and expandability, is presented as well.

Calculated assessment of the impact of geometric deviations from the design on the parameters of mechanical safety of building metal structures within the framework of scientific and technical support for construction

An important part of scientific and technical support of civil engineering facilities at a construction stage - evaluation of influence of fluctuations from a designed geometry onto mechanical safety parameters of load-bearing metal structures - is considered. A multi-tier structure (industrial frame tower) is employed to demonstrate main features of such an assessment. Given is an approach to an analysis of as-built documentation and to a choice of most significant fluctuations of structural metal elements from a designed geometry. Effect of erection sequence being taken into consideration, the so-called genetic non-linearity, during computational estimation of a stress-strain state of metal structures mounted with deviations from their design positions is investigated. Results of static and dynamic analyses of designed and as-built (with geometry fluctuations taken into consideration) models of the multi-level industrial frame tower are obtained and compared with each other. Basing on these results, guidelines for computational assessment of effects of fluctuations from a designed geometry onto mechanical safety parameters of similar frame systems are formulated.

Heat transfer assessment of multi-tier chilling pipes for root zone cooling system under crop protection structure in the tropics

Root zone cooling technique has become an alternative cultivation method for temperate crops production in the tropics instead of cooling the aerial environment of the greenhouse. In this experiment, the root zone cooling system was incorporated with a multi-tier crop cultivation structure. This structure consisted of five tiers arranged in an A-shape design and was placed under an open rain shelter, thus, left it to undergo fluctuating environment temperature. There were five pillow polybags inserted with cocopeat and were placed on the structure. Each pillow polybag consisted of a single pipe that was buried inside the growth media located near the root zone area. This pipe that was connected to the chilled system acted as a cooling agent in controlling the growth media temperature. The objective of the study was to evaluate the Root Zone Cooling (RZC) system performance in distributing and controlling water-dissolved nutrient temperatures to meet crop-root requirement needs. From the experiment conducted, it was found that there was no significant difference between root zone temperature at different levels and lengths on multi-tier structure. The chilling pipes was able to distribute the temperatures to meet crop-root requirement needs along the multi-tier structure.

A Study on the Manufacture and Usage of Late-Joseon Chanhap

The chanhap is a type of tableware designed to stack various types of dishes in separate compartments or tiers. This dissertation aims to determine the characteristics of chanhap by medium as well as the cultural background that popularized their manufacture and use in the late Joseon era. Chanhap’s multitiered structure, dubbed differently across different civilizations, has been widely favored in the three major Far East countries among various social classes. It was introduced to the Korean culture from China and Japan, and the manufacture and usage became popular in the late Joseon. Chanhap secured its reputation as a luxury piece loved by royals and scholars. The late-Joseon chanhap in different media differ in origins. This study found origins of wooden chanhap from the portable dish box from the Ming Dynasty; porcelain chanhap from the 2-tier round Japanese porcelain dish box made to receive the Sinmi Envoys from Joseon in 1811. Specific historical records have revealed that the late-Joseon chanhap was used as portable carrier and storage as well as dishware for royal banquets. This discovery has illuminated the various usage and complex characteristics of the multitiered structure of chanhap .

Sampling Hyrule: Multi-Technique Probabilistic Level Generation for Action Role Playing Games

Procedural Content Generation (PCG) using machine learning is a fast growing area of research. Action Role Playing Game (ARPG) levels represent an interesting challenge for PCG due to their multi-tiered structure and nonlinearity. Previous work has used Bayes Nets (BN) to learn properties of the topological structure of levels from The Legend of Zelda. In this paper we describe a method for sampling these learned distributions to generate valid, playable level topologies. We carry this deeper and learn a sampleable representation of the individual rooms using Principal Component Analysis. We combine the two techniques and present a multi-scale machine learned technique for procedurally generating ARPG levels from a corpus of levels from The Legend of Zelda.

Livelihood Promotion: Can the Collectives of NRLM Really Do It?

As a new generation development programme, the National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) has sought to promote collectives of the poor women as the corner-stone of its strategy for livelihood promotion. The livelihood enhancement is meant to be actualised through a multi-dimensional strategy of livelihood protection and promotion. The paper hypothesised that despite their avowed goal, the collectives of women are bound to face enormous challenges in the livelihood promotion in the absence of an integrated approach more so in the context of neoliberalism. The findings of the paper corroborate the hypothesis to a great extent. Contrary to the theoretical visualisation of institutionalists, collectives of poor have faced challenges in their self-reliant emergence. The intervention has emerged more as a minimalist microfinance with inherent limitations regarding poverty alleviation. The paper concludes that the collectives of NRLM have a long way to go before they can emerge as strong livelihood promoting agencies. Sustained support to build the capacities of the fledging collectives, a reversal of the top–down elements of their multi-tier structure and the strong need for greater role clarity for the collectives along with professional support are some of the policy suggestions.

Fiscal Externalities in Multilevel Tax Structures: Evidence from Concurrent Income Taxation

This paper exploits the multi-tiered structure of personal income taxation in Italy to investigate within-tier (horizontal) and between-tiers (vertical and diagonal) fiscal externalities. Estimation of an unrestricted income tax reaction function on municipalities located at internal regional borders using o¤-border Wald-type grouping variables as well as the staggered schedule of mayoral elections as instruments for endogenous spatial lags reveals strong positive spatial dependence in municipal tax rates. On the other hand, there is no evidence of a response of municipal tax rates to regional tax policies, suggesting that border discontinuity estimators that rely on consolidated spatial specifications (lower-plus-upper-tier tax rates) impose restrictions on the parameters of the reaction function that are unwarranted in these circumstances.

CFDSD: a Communication Framework for Distributed Software Development

Due to geographical and/or temporal dispersion, communication between teams in distributed software projects is a critical factor for success. Notably, distributed teams suffer adverse physical and temporal dispersion effects during an information exchange. To mitigate problems arising from interactions, it is important to understand the communication structure of teams during distributed projects. The objective of this work is to present the Communication Framework for Distributed Software Development. This framework groups a set of distributed projects communication concepts and enables a unified view of all stakeholders’ intercommunications that use many interaction technologies. The goal of this framework is to portray the dynamics of the interaction between distributed teams in a multi-tier structure, and each tier approaches a single function in the intercommunication process. We analyzed all interactions from distributed teams after developing an experimental IT Project, using the content analysis method to validate the Communication Framework for Distributed Software Development. The main contribution of this work is the framework specification, and the investigation, which has the potential to help mapping communication patterns in DSD. Moreover, this framework comprises interfaces for communication assessment and includes intercommunications from automated engineering tools as bots.

A new insight into multi-tier structure tailoring: Synchronous utilization of particle migration and incompatible interface separation under shear flow

In this work, polyethylene (PE)/silica microsphere composite melt is used to penetrate the ethylene-α-octene block copolymer (OBC) melt in multi-melt multi-injection molding (M3IM) process. Due to the viscosity difference between PE/silica composite melt and OBC melt, a disturbed flow interface of these two melts formed. Thanks to the “shear-induced migration” theory in suspended balance model (SB model) and the unique flow field in M3IM, silica microspheres can be designed to migrate from high shear rate layer to low shear rate layer in PE/silica core melt, further to intaglio micro-pits on the interface of PE/silica core and OBC skin melt. As a result, the migrated silica microspheres can be intuitively observed by peeling off the OBC layer, as well as a “lotus seedpod”-like structure consisting of quantity-adjustable asperities and micro-pits can be constructed on the peeled surface of OBC layer. This work sheds lights to rapidly fabricate multi-tier structures by polymer melt processing strategies, aiming to manufacture functional devices on a large scale.

Differentiated EU Integration: Maps and Modes

This paper reports a descriptive analysis of the historical development and the modes of differentiated integration in the treaties and legislation of the European Union. Whereas the number of differentiations has increased in the course of European integration, it has remained stationary relative to the growth of the EU’s membership, policy portfolio and legal production. Differentiated integration is predominantly multi-speed integration, typically originating in enlargement, focusing on internal market policies and affecting the comparatively poor Southern and Eastern new member states. In addition, durable differentiations originating in the deepening of the integration of core state powers have created a multi-tier structure, but the core is inclusive and open. The crisis period of European integration has reinforced the differentiation of the EU for the time being, but both Brexit and the stagnation of widening and deepening are likely to slow down differentiation.

Development of a Simple Method for Labeling and Identification of Protein Binders in Art

Easel paintings are assets with an important historic and cultural value. They usually possess a multi-tiered structure, composed of different layers some of which may present protein binders, making it important to identify these materials for restoration and conservation purposes. We propose the identification of different protein binders by a new fluorescent labeling method employing a coumarin based chromophore, C392STP (sodium(E/Z)-4-(4-(2-(6,7-dimethoxycoumarin-3-yl)vinyl)benzoyl)-2,3,5,6-tetrafluorobenzenesulfo-nate). The method was optimized using commercial proteins and was further tested on proteins extracted from hen’s egg yolk, white bovine milk, and rabbit skin glue. To model more realistic conditions, paint models of easel paintings were prepared. The paint models were made with hen’s egg yolk, white bovine milk, and rabbit skin glue, mixed with different pigments and submitted to artificial aging. Then the extracted proteins from the paint models were labeled with C392 which allowed a sensitive and selective identification by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) of the different protein binders used. As a final test, three 19th century easel paintings, from the Italian painter Giorgio Marini, were analyzed. The results show the potential of the proposed method for the identification of protein binders present in easel paintings.

Joint failure recovery, fault prevention, and energy-efficient resource management for real-time SFC in fog-supported SDN

Middleboxes have become a vital part of modern networks by providing services such as load balancing, optimization of network traffic, and content filtering. A sequence of middleboxes comprising a logical service is called a Service Function Chain (SFC). In this context, the main issues are to maintain an acceptable level of network path survivability and a fair allocation of the resource between different demands in the event of faults or failures. In this paper, we focus on the problems of traffic engineering, failure recovery, fault prevention, and SFC with reliability and energy consumption constraints in Software Defined Networks (SDN). These types of deployments use Fog computing as an emerging paradigm to manage the distributed small-size traffic flows passing through the SDN-enabled switches (possibly Fog Nodes). The main aim of this integration is to support service delivery in real-time, failure recovery, and fault-awareness in an SFC context. Firstly, we present an architecture for Failure Recovery and Fault Prevention called FRFP; this is a multi-tier structure in which the real-time traffic flows pass through SDN-enabled switches to jointly decrease the network side-effects of flow rerouting and energy consumption of the Fog Nodes. We then mathematically formulate an optimization problem called the Optimal Fog-Supported Energy-Aware SFC rerouting algorithm (OFES) and propose a near-optimal heuristic called Heuristic OFES (HFES) to solve the corresponding problem in polynomial time. In this way, the energy consumption and the reliability of the selected paths are optimized, while the Quality of Service (QoS) constraints are met and the network congestion is minimized. In a reliability context, the focus of this work is on fault prevention; however, since we use a reallocation technique, the proposed scheme can be used as a failure recovery scheme. We compare the performance of HFES and OFES in terms of energy consumption, average path length, fault probability, network side-effects, link utilization, and Fog Node utilization. Additionally, we analyze the computational complexity of HFES. We use a real-world network topology to evaluate our algorithm. The simulation results show that the heuristic algorithm is applicable to large-scale networks.

Self-aligned capillarity-assisted printing of top-gate thin-film transistors on plastic

Top-gate thin-film transistors (TFTs) are fabricated on plastic using a self-aligned method based on capillarity-assisted lithography and inkjet printing, offering a promising platform for high-throughput manufacturing of flexible electronic devices. Plastic substrates are imprinted with a multi-tier structure containing capillary channels and ink receivers using a precision mold. Liquid inks are sequentially delivered to the microstructured substrate by inkjet printing, and capillary action draws the inks into a multi-tier capillary channel network designed for top-gate TFTs. The combination of imprinting, inkjet printing, and capillary flow yields self-aligned multi-layered devices without requiring precise registration for inkjet printing. The printed top-gate TFTs with Ag/Cu source and drain, poly(3-hexylthiophene) semiconducting channel, ion gel dielectric, and graphene gate electrode have desirable transfer and output characteristics, with a hole mobility of 0.48 cm2 V−1 s−1, threshold voltage of −0.86 V, on/off current ratio of 104.5, and robust tolerance to bending. The top-gate geometry and careful materials selection yields devices with negligible hysteresis and sweep rate dependence, establishing the versatility and utility of this self-aligned strategy for more widespread application in printed and flexible electronics.

FOCAN: A Fog-supported smart city network architecture for management of applications in the Internet of Everything environments

Smart city vision brings emerging heterogeneous communication technologies such as Fog Computing (FC) together to substantially reduce the latency and energy consumption of Internet of Everything (IoE) devices running various applications. The key feature that distinguishes the FC paradigm for smart cities is that it spreads communication and computing resources over the wired/wireless access network (e.g., proximate access points and base stations) to provide resource augmentation (e.g., cyberforaging) for resource- and energy-limited wired/wireless (possibly mobile) things. Motivated by these considerations, this paper presents a Fog-supported smart city network architecture called Fog Computing Architecture Network (FOCAN), a multi-tier structure in which the applications are running on things thatjointly compute, route, and communicate with one another through the smart city environment. FOCAN decreases latency and improves energy provisioning and the efficiency of services among things with different capabilities. In particular, three types of communications are defined between FOCAN devices – interprimary, primary, and secondary communication –to manage applications in a way that meets the quality of service standards for the Internet of Everything. One of the main advantages of the proposed architecture is that the devices can provide the services with low energy usage and in an efficient manner. Simulation results for a selected case study demonstrate the tremendous impact of the FOCAN energy-efficient solution on the communication performance of various types of things in smart cities.