Official Tool Research Articles

Optimizing energy efficiency in mediterranean single-family homes: A parametric study of building typology, orientation, and BIPV integration

The energy efficiency of residential buildings is a critical concern, especially in regions with challenging climatic conditions like the Mediterranean. Despite numerous studies on energy-efficient design, there is a lack of specificity in how building typology, orientation, and Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPVs) interact to influence energy performance. This study addresses this gap by conducting a parametric investigation of single-family houses, focusing on variations in building typology and orientation, both with and without BIPV integration. The parameters evaluated include energy consumption for heating, cooling, lighting, and domestic hot water, using simulations performed with iSBEM-Cy, the official tool for energy performance calculations in Cyprus. The results reveal that building orientation can reduce energy consumption, while BIPV integration contributes additional energy savings. Terraced houses with only Building-Applied Photovoltaics (BAPVs) showed the best energy balance (−38.20 kWh/m2/yr), while detached houses had the highest energy consumption (71.24 kWh/m2/yr). With BIPVs, energy balances improved significantly across all typologies, with terraced houses reaching −78.20 kWh/m2/yr, demonstrating the strong potential of BIPV integration. These findings highlight the importance of considering context-specific factors when integrating renewable energy systems, offering insights for architects and urban planners.

Evaluar el nivel de competencia intercultural de los candidatos al examen DELE a partir de su actuación oral

The importance of acquiring intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has taken on a prominent role in recent decades as a result of the increasingly pluralistic coexistence within our society. This awareness has also been transferred to the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language. However, no official tool is yet used for assessing this construct due to its inherent subjectivity, which prevents it from being assessed in the DELE official exams (Diploma in Spanish as a Foreign Language). Although the CCSE test (Constitutional and Sociocultural Knowledge of Spain) includes some questions related to this competence, priority is mostly given to knowledge of Culture. For this reason, the following paper suggests a rubric which could detect the level of intercultural competence of learners based on their performance on the oral expression and interaction test of the DELE exam.

A support system for the detection of abusive clauses in B2C contracts

AbstractMany countries employ systemic methods of protecting consumers from unfair business practices. One such practice is the use of abusive clauses in business-to-consumer (B2C) contracts, which unfairly impose additional obligations on the consumer or deprive them of their due rights. This article presents an information system that utilizes artificial intelligence methods to automate contract analysis and to detect abusive clauses. The goal of the system is to support the entire administrative process, from contract acquisition, through text extraction and the recommendation of potentially abusive clauses, to the generation of official administrative documents that can be sent to court or to the owners of firms. This article focuses on on the components that use machine learning methods. The first is an intelligent crawler that is responsible for automatically detecting contract templates on websites and retrieving them into the system. The second is a document analysis module that implements a clause recommendation algorithm. The algorithm employs transformer-based language models and information retrieval methods to identify abusive passages in text. Our solution achieved first place in a competition on the automatic analysis of B2C contracts organized by the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK), and has since been implemented as an official tool to support the contract analysis process in Poland.

Matcha

Apple and Google introduced their versions of privacy nutrition labels to the mobile app stores to better inform users of the apps' data practices. However, these labels are self-reported by developers and have been found to contain many inaccuracies due to misunderstandings of the label taxonomy. In this work, we present Matcha, an IDE plugin that uses automated code analysis to help developers create accurate Google Play data safety labels. Developers can benefit from Matcha's ability to detect user data accesses and transmissions while staying in control of the generated label by adding custom Java annotations and modifying an auto-generated XML specification. Our evaluation with 12 developers showed that Matcha helped our participants improved the accuracy of a label they created with Google's official tool for a real-world app they developed. We found that participants preferred Matcha for its accuracy benefits. Drawing on Matcha, we discuss general design recommendations for developer tools used to create accurate standardized privacy notices.

Reducing CO2 Emissions of Hybrid Heavy-Duty Trucks and Buses: Paving the Transition to Low-Carbon Transport

This study investigates the CO2 reduction potential of powertrain hybridisation on heavy-duty lorries and city buses. The analysis considers modern parallel and serial hybrid architectures, assessing their efficiency and limits in CO2 emission reduction through vehicle simulation in VECTO, which is the official tool of the European Commission for calculating heavy-duty vehicle fuel and energy consumption. The results reveal distinct trends for each vehicle type and architecture. In lorries, more significant improvements are observed in urban delivery profiles, reaching up to ~16%, indicating the benefits of hybridisation in transient conditions with energy recuperation opportunities. City buses, particularly those with serial architectures, exhibit significant emission reductions that reach 36%, making them suitable for urban environments. The optimisation of electric motor size and performance plays a crucial role in achieving emission reductions, while battery capacity must be carefully considered to avoid adverse effects. For lorries in urban delivery use, further improvements of 17.5% can be achieved by utilising a 160 kW engine motor and 30 kWh battery. Buses are already quite well optimised, with serial architecture presenting the highest benefits with a 120 kW electric motor and a battery of 11 kWh. Future research should focus on supercapacitors and gearboxes to improve efficiency at higher vehicle speeds and assess hybridisation potential in interurban coach travel. The heavy-duty vehicle sector can make significant strides towards low-carbon transport by maximising hybrid powertrain efficiency and emission reductions.

Access-based land value appreciation for assessing project benefits

The traditional mobility-oriented travel-time saving benefit assessment method has been repeatedly questioned for numerous intrinsic flaws, motivating the search for alternative benefit assessment approaches. Although a wealth of literature confirms the capitalization effect of access benefits induced by transport improvements to land or real estate value, the access-based land value uplift method hasn’t yet been widely recognized and employed as an official tool assisting transport decision-making. The present paper collects 136 empirical studies and aims to disentangle the obstacles hindering the promotion of the access-based assessment method by systematically reviewing methodological design, the access metrics used, and the target real estate sub-markets or land use types upon which access benefits are quantified. First, it was found that almost half of the sampled studies just investigated the general effects of transport operation on real estate prices without incorporating sufficient temporal and locational considerations, thereby failing to isolate project-specific incremental impacts. Second, while the hedonic pricing model remains the most popular model, a trend towards embracing more advanced modelling techniques such as spatial lag, spatial error, and Difference-in-Differences (DID) models to control for bias caused by spatial dependence has been observed. Third, Euclidean distance and distance buffer rings are the most widely used operational measures of access. Primal access measures covering the number of opportunities available at a destination and travel impedance are recommended. Last, over 86% of sampled empirical studies target the residential real estate market. The lack of non-residential land uses in the literature presents a significant research gap that should be addressed.

Yakın Dönem Osmanlı Diplomasisinde Kuliner Diplomasi Örnekleri

Throughout history, not only have meals served people as a source of nutrition, but they also have served as both an individual and official tool of diplomatic agreement between people. In being representative of the culture and traditions of the host country, they serve to establish effective communication with the counter party, create a positive atmosphere, and strengthen relationships. Today, politicians still employ the unifying effect of meals as one of many tools of diplomacy. Since the dawn of man, many a statesman had employed this method with the intent of giving a positive impression both on friend and foe alike; Ottoman statesmen were no exception to this rule. One can observe many examples of culinary culture having been employed in diplomatic affairs towards the final years of the Ottoman Empire. When we look at banquets that Ottoman Sultans had prepared for their foreign guests, not only do we see that they had offered them the crème de la crème of delicacies highlighting Turkish culinary culture offered, we also see that had been treated to dishes from their own gastronomies as well. Ottoman Sultans had hosted many banquets because of their power to unify, both in terms of foreign and domestic politics. This study has reviewed and exemplified how culinary diplomacy had been used during the late era of Ottoman diplomacy.

The SDGs and Non-Financial Disclosures of Energy Companies: The Italian Experience

For some years, energy companies (ECs) have been increasingly pressured to address a broader set of social and environmental responsibilities that respond adequately to citizens’ expectations, local and international regulatory frameworks, and transnational initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thus, ECs have invested considerable resources to reduce the environmental and social impact in their activities. This study aims to verify the measures that ECs have actually adopted by analyzing their social and sustainability reports. These reports constitute an official tool, and they are also supported by specific mandatory regulations such as EU Directive 2014/95, in which companies provide a non-financial disclosure aimed at demonstrating how their pursuit of the conditions of economic and financial equilibrium is increasingly and closely linked with the ability to assure sustainable development. This study considers eight major ECs operating in the Italian market. It compares the findings with two important foreign ECs that draw up a very structured and innovative report: the integrated report. The outcomes confirm that these ECs are making significant progress in the environmental and social spheres, although the path to full sustainable development is still unreached. The policy implications emerging from this study can contribute to this direction.

Statistical performance indicators and index—a new tool to measure country statistical capacity

Strong statistical capacity is a prerequisite for producing reliable statistics that helps monitor a country’s governance and economic performance. This is particularly relevant for a large number of poorer countries, which have weaker statistical capacity but have to rely more on these statistics for various objectives such as monitoring poverty reduction or reporting to international donors. We present the Statistical Performance Indicators and Index (SPI) as the World Bank’s new official tool to measure country statistical capacity. The SPI is conceptually motivated, builds on a mathematical foundation, and significantly expands the number of indicators and the number of covered countries compared to its predecessor. The new index has a strong correlation with other common development indicators such as GDP per capita, governance, human capital, poverty, and inequality. It can also accommodate future improvements as the global data landscape evolves.

Mercury: Instruction Pipeline Aware Code Generation for Simulink Models

Simulink is a widely used model-driven design environment for supporting the simulation and code generation of embedded applications. To improve the quality of the code generated from Simulink models, state-of-the-art code generators employ various high-level optimizations, like eliminating local variables. However, they overlook the compatibility between code and the low-level processor architecture, especially the instruction pipeline. Consequently, instruction pipeline stalls occur frequently, leading to additional delays in instruction execution, as well as limited efficiency for deployed the embedded software. In this article, we propose Mercury, an instruction pipeline aware code generator for Simulink models which utilizes data dependencies between actors to decrease the instruction pipeline stalls of the generated code. First, Mercury collects data dependencies through model dataflow traversal and records the property of each actor. Then, Mercury approximately estimates the execution latency of required instructions fetched from corresponding actors and uses a topology-based method to obtain candidate actors for code synthesis. Finally, Mercury adopts the least penalty priority to iteratively select the most suitable actor for code synthesis and releases data dependencies with its subsequent actors. We implemented and evaluated Mercury on benchmark Simulink models (Su et al., 2021) as well as a real industrial model. Compared to the official tool Simulink Embedded Coder and the state-of-the-art academic tool DFSynth, Mercury outperformed them by 9.7%–33.4% and 9.2%–59.4% in terms of the execution time of the generated code across different architectures, respectively. The statistics also demonstrate that the generated code of Mercury increases utilization of pipeline slots by 11.0%–37.1% and 10.6%–50.0%, respectively.

Airing the Gospel: Christian radio broadcast and multiple narratives in early reform-era China

ABSTRACT This article explores the influential role that international Christian broadcasting enterprises played in the conversion of the Chinese during the transition from the Maoist to the Reform era. Despite being an official tool of propaganda and information dissemination, the popularization of radio offered an opening for the Far East Broadcasting Company (FEBC) and the Seventh-day Adventists in the British colony of Hong Kong to air religious programs in Cantonese and Mandarin. These foreign radios created an invisible, electronic platform for Mainland Christians to form a listening community of believers, seeking spiritual or moral guidance from the outside world. Listening to Christian programs became part of the Chinese faith practice when the Maoist state closed places of worship and prohibited public religious activities throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Accessing valuable religious and secular information abroad emancipated the listeners from the confinement of socialist collectivism, especially when the Communist utopia lost its appeal in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Consulting dozens of Chinese listeners’ letters, this study highlights the ways in which the believers navigated a changing social and cultural landscape, from one monopolized by the one-party state to a more dynamic domain semi-regulated by the government and the market. Because the letters are constructed source materials at a particular moment in history, it is important to treat the listeners’ accounts as indicative of their efforts to theologize personal struggle and faith experience and to seek new modes of self-expression.

UBUMonitor: An Open-Source Desktop Application for Visual E-Learning Analysis with Moodle

An inherent requirement of teaching using online learning platforms is that the teacher must analyze student activity and performance in relation to course learning objectives. Therefore, all e-learning environments implement a module to collect such information. Nevertheless, these raw data must be processed to perform e-learning analysis and to help teachers arrive at relevant decisions for the teaching process. In this paper, UBUMonitor is presented, an open-source desktop application that downloads Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) platform data, so that student activity and performance can be monitored. The application organizes and summarizes these data in various customizable charts for visual analysis. The general features and uses of UBUMonitor are described, as are some approaches to e-teaching improvements, through real case studies. These include the analysis of accesses per e-learning object, statistical analysis of grading e-activities, detection of e-learning object configuration errors, checking of teacher activity, and comparisons between online and blended learning profiles. As an open-source application, UBUMonitor was institutionally adopted as an official tool and validated with several groups of teachers at the Teacher Training Institute of the University of Burgos.

Determination of Water Quality Status of Telaga Menjer Wonosobo, Indonesia: An Official Tool for Evaluating the Best Function of Water

Determination of Water Quality Status of Telaga Menjer Wonosobo, Indonesia: An Official Tool for Evaluating the Best Function of Water

Development of a microsphere-based immunoassay for the serological diagnosis of equine trypanosomosis

Trypanozoon infections in equids are caused by three parasite species in the Trypanozoon subgenus: Trypanosoma equiperdum, T. brucei and T. evansi. They are respectively responsible for infectious diseases dourine, nagana and surra. Due to the threat that Trypanozoon infection represents for international horse trading, accurate diagnostic tests are crucial. Current tests suffer from poor sensitivity and specificity, due in the first case to the transient presence of parasites in the blood and in the second, to antigenic cross-reactivity among Trypanozoon subspecies. This study was designed to develop a microsphere‐based immunoassay for diagnosing equine trypanosomosis. We tested beads coated with eight Trypanosoma spp. recombinant antigens: enolase, GM6, PFR1, PFR2, ISG65, VSGat, RoTat1.2 and JN2118HU. Of these, GM6 was identified as the best candidate for the serological diagnosis of Trypanozoon infections in equids. Using a receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis on 349 equine sera, anti-GM6 antibodies were detected with an AUC value of 0.994 offering a sensitivity of 97.9% and a specificity of 96.0%. Our findings show that the GM6 antigen is a good target for diagnosing equine trypanosomosis using a microsphere‐based immunoassay. This promising assay could be a useful alternative to the official diagnostic tool for equine trypanosomosis.

Localization Tools in General Purpose Game Engines: A Systematic Mapping Study

This paper addresses localization from a game development perspective by studying the state of tool support for a localization work in general purpose game engines. Using a systematic mapping study, the most commonly used game engines and their official tool libraries are studied. The results indicate that even though localization tools exists for the game engines included in the study, the visibility, availability, and functionality differ. Localization tools that are user facing, i.e., used to create localization, are scarce while many are tool facing, i.e., used to import localization kits made outside the production pipeline.

An Adaptation of the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) for Measuring Food Insecurity Among Women in Socially- Backward Communities

Recent reviews on the use of experience-based food insecurity scales in the Indian context suggested the addition of "how often" related items to food insecurity modules to avoid overestimation of food insecurity, especially in underprivileged communities. Following this recommendation, we adapted the 8-item Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), an official tool for measuring access to food within the Sustainable Development Goals (target 2.1), and assessed its validity and reliability in socially-backward communities in the Indian context. The polytomous Rasch model was successfully applied and soundly integrated within the probabilistic methodology already in use for the FIES, allowing the computation of comparable prevalence of food insecurity at different levels of severity and related measures of uncertainty. Data from the SWABHIMAAN programme survey, which collected information on food insecurity from mothers of children under two years of age in three Indian states (Bihar, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh), was used for analysis. Results suggest that the proposed adapted version of the FIES can be considered as a proper tool for measuring food insecurity in underprivileged communities, since it satisfies requirements of internal and external validity and reliability. Individual determinants and protective factors of food insecurity were also investigated within this methodological framework and results suggest that education, economic wealth, and homestead kitchen garden can act as a buffer against food insecurity, while the number of pregnancies seems to exacerbate a situation of food insecurity.

General Circulation Newspaper “Babaevets” as a Source for the USSR Food Industry History during the First Five-Year Plan (Content Analysis and Net Analysis Data)

The article considers "Babaevets" newspaper as a source for the USSR food industry history during the first five-year plan. The author studies the issue of formulating the correct methodological approaches for the most complete disclosure of the information potential of the factory press and introduces the materials of a little-studied source (the newspaper of P. A. Babaev’s confectionery factory) into scientific discourse. The article studies the texts of this paper by means of content analysis and network analysis. The study highlights the priority topics that were traced in the newspaper during the first five-year plan, analyzes their internal relationships, both explicit and implicit. The analysis provided for a conclusion that the source understudy is informationally rich as far as food industry history and the impact on workers’ mass consciousness in 1928-1932 are concerned. The author comes to a conclusion that "Babayevets" primarily covered the issues of production process management and ideological work with the staff. The problem of production efficiency was the main connecting element in the content of the newspaper. Special role of all levels of the factory management in achieving the indicators of the first five-year plan was emphasized by the newspaper explicitly and implicitly thus proving the status of the factory newspaper to be an official tool of the party committee. 

Rare male cancers: Effect of social deprivation on a cohort of penile cancer patients

Background: Penile cancer is a rare disease, with approximately 600 cases diagnosed every year in the UK. In this study, we assessed the impact of social deprivation on penile cancer, concentrating on incidence, disease factors, surgical treatment and mortality within our ‘Supranetwork’ population. Methods: All cases of penile cancer in the West of Scotland were identified from the uro-oncology multidisciplinary team meetings over a 10-year period covering January 2008 to December 2017. Patients underwent treatment within the remit of a centralised service, and social deprivation was determined using the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), which is the Scottish government’s official tool to identify areas of multiple deprivations. Results: A total of 278 patients were identified, with an age range of 27–97 years ( M=64 years). The incidence of penile cancer in SIMD category 1 (most deprived) is 7.2/100,000 population at risk compared to 2.8/100,000 population at risk in SIMD category 5 (least deprived). Histologically, a higher proportion of aggressive grade 3 cancers (45% vs. 16%, p=0.03) and more advanced N2/N3 nodal disease (63% vs. 33%, p=0.04) was found in SIMD category 1 compared to SIMD category 5, suggesting higher incidence of delayed presentation with more advanced and aggressive disease in the most deprived populations. Conclusions: The level of social deprivation shows a significant association with penile cancer incidence, tumour grade and stage at time of diagnosis, with a resulting disproportionate impact on morbidity and mortality in the most deprived cohort of patients. Public awareness and efforts to increase earlier diagnoses of penile cancer in these ‘hard to reach’ men should be an important step in improving overall outcomes from penile cancer.

PENGARUH KEAMANAN ASET PEMERINTAH DAERAH TERHADAP PENYALAHGUNAAN PERALATAN KANTOR: STUDI KASUS DI DINAS PEKERJAAN UMUM DAN PENATAAN RUANG KOTA SALATIGA

This research aims to describe the forms, preventions, intention of abuse, and intentions of report in abusing the official tool assets. In government, it is essential to have adequate asset management because a regional asset is the important resource for a regional government. The research is descriptively using with quantitative approach and primary data. The Sample used is non-probability sampling; purposive sampling. Data collection technique is survey. The research result pointed out that employee at Salatiga Public Work and Space Management Office assumed the use of office tools for personal use in working hours and outer of it, bringing them home, returning, and keeping them in the following time were forms of abusing office tools.

Evaluating the official achievement of Aichi Target 11 for West African countries: A twofold challenge of accuracy and catching-up

Since Aichi Target 11 imposes 10% of national protected marine surface by 2020, the least developed countries have particularly shortcomings towards this goal, this article evaluates the progress of seven West African countries. We compared the area reportedly protected sites from two different sources, the world database on protected areas (WDPA) – which is the official tool to monitor the Aichi 11 Achievements – and the West African Marine Protected Area Network, which conducted a comprehensive survey in collaboration with the national institutions in charge of MPAs. Overall, the countries included in this study are unlikely to achieve the Aichi target. Comparing WDPA protected area figures against database created directly from national data showed large discrepancies. According to national data, Mauritania (3.71%) and Guinea-Bissau (2.15%) had the highest protected areas. Senegal had 1.61% of his EEZ under protection, while other countries had <1%. The difference between WDPA and national data was high with Guinea-Bissau already at 10% of EEZ protected areas status according to the WDPA. WDPA overestimated 5935 km2 of MPAs, corresponding to 41% of the actual total area. Possible explanations for the differences include: countries not transmitting information or doing so incorrectly; methodological transformations of data are inducing errors; and multiple MPA statutes leading to double counting of protected areas. This study also shows that for these countries, to achieve Aichi Target 11, large offshore MPAs are the only viable option, and therefore identifies potential sites, that should be considered in addition to conservation of coastal zones. However, their viability may be constrained due to oil activities and lucrative fishing. The increasingly anthropized littoral zone offers less space favourable to MPAs, while 138,723 km2 still need to be covered in these countries to reach 10% of marine protected area.