Prototype Case Study Research Articles

Study of pore system properties of tight gas sandstones based on analysis of the seismically derived velocity deviation log: A case study from the Perth Basin of western Australia

The Whicher Range field of the Perth Basin includes tight sandstones of the late Permian Willespie Formation with substantial gas reserves. Reservoir properties of these sandstones, in addition to the influence of initial depositional texture, have been significantly modified by diagenesis, reflecting in fluid flow and production behavior in the field. In this study, with the target of unraveling the reservoir heterogeneity related to pore types, sandstone rock types were investigated in detail by integrating core data and velocity deviation log derived from the Wyllie equation. The results show that the variations in this parameter are intimately related to pore system properties of tight sandstone facies in the field. Estimation of velocity deviation from seismic data resulted in the identification of three main rock types (RT-1, RT-2, and RT-3) with different pore characteristics. Evaluation of the identified rock types showed that RT3, which is correlated with medium to coarse and gravely sandstones, significantly contributes to the high production reservoir zones. This rock type with isolated and traces of intergranular pore types is distributed in upper parts of the reservoir interval mainly along wells WR1 and WR4.The methodology described in this study is well working with geological, petrophysical, and seismic data. It can be employed as a prototype case study in reservoir characterization of tight sandstone reservoirs.

LBsoft: A parallel open-source software for simulation of colloidal systems

We present LBsoft, an open-source software developed mainly to simulate the hydro-dynamics of colloidal systems based on the concurrent coupling between lattice Boltzmann methods for the fluid and discrete particle dynamics for the colloids. Such coupling has been developed before, but, to the best of our knowledge, no detailed discussion of the programming issues to be faced in order to attain efficient implementation on parallel architectures, has ever been presented to date. In this paper, we describe in detail the underlying multi-scale models, their coupling procedure, along side with a description of the relevant input variables, to facilitate third-parties usage.The code is designed to exploit parallel computing platforms, taking advantage also of the recent AVX-512 instruction set. We focus on LBsoft structure, functionality, parallel implementation, performance and availability, so as to facilitate the access to this computational tool to the research community in the field.The capabilities of LBsoft are highlighted for a number of prototypical case studies, such as pickering emulsions, bicontinuous systems, as well as an original study of the coarsening process in confined bijels under shear. Program summaryProgram Title: LBsoftCPC Library link to program files:http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/dvpfx9p342.1Licensing provisions: BSD 3-Clause LicenseProgramming language: Fortran 95Nature of problem: Hydro-dynamics of the colloidal multi-component systems and Pickering emulsions.Solution method: Numerical solutions to the Navier–Stokes equations by Lattice-Boltzmann (lattice-Bhatnagar–Gross–Krook, LBGK) method [1] describing the fluid dynamics within an Eulerian description. Numerical solutions to the equations of motion describing a set of discrete colloidal particles within a Lagrangian representation coupled to the LBGK solver [2]. The numerical solution of the coupling algorithm includes the back reaction effects for each force term following a multi-scale paradigm.[1] S. Succi, The Lattice Boltzmann Equation: For Fluid Dynamics and Beyond, Oxford University Press, 2001.[2] A. Ladd, R. Verberg, Lattice-Boltzmann simulations of particle-fluid suspensions, J. Stat. Phys. 104.5–6 (2001) 1191–1251.

Sustainable Building Material Technology as an Approach to Thermal Comfort in Low Income Housing in Hot Regions

Due to increasing the demand for low income housing projects, the Egyptian Government has constructed a large number of identical residential units all over the country regardless the climatic condition of each location and the economic and environmental aspects in design and construction process. This has led to lack of thermal comfort in the indoor environment and increasing in energy consumption. On the other hand, this problem can be solved by choosing the appropriate building material with respect to environmental design principles. It can greatly improve the thermal performance and reduce the negative impact of these projects on human and environment. The main aim of this research is to evaluate the thermal behavior of the current low income housing prototype (case study) and improve it using alternative sustainable building materials and techniques in order to reach human thermal comfort. It also provides an analytical study of global experiences on using friendly construction material in an environment friendly similar project. The performance of the case study evaluated using computer simulation program (design Builder). This research process led to a strategy of improving public housing projects in Egypt.

Information technology for automation of development and deployment virtual cloud environment based on serverless architecture

The article presents the structure of information technology to automate the development and deployment of a virtual cloud environment based on a serverless architecture. The process of creating information technology for automation of development and deployment of a virtual cloud environment based on serverless architecture is presented, the presented metamodel for prototype case study is evaluated and possible future directions of improvement are suggested. Although many software tools are available for deploying and managing complex cloud services, users often have to specify IaC solutions using low-level scenarios. Instead, known solutions require the developer to specify program components, such as a web application, and preferably the framework would automatically convert them to expandable code. To solve these problems and implement the desired capabilities, a modeled and scalable, fast-supply structure called Information Technology for Automating the Development and Deployment of a Virtual Cloud Environment Based on a Serverless Architecture (ІТаррх) is proposed. ITarrch meets the requirements of the topology specification for cloud applications, which allows you to create portable and interoperable templates for cloud services. The use of OpenTOSCA provides standardization of the delimitation of software applications and their dependencies on the specifications of the cloud platform.. The main contributions to this acticle are that the key elements of ІТаррх modeling are presented, which automates and masks the low-level details of application component specifications and cloud service provider specifications, and instead offers high-level intuitive representations; the use of an extended knowledge base and algorithms for automatic execution of IaC transformations is proposed; made a specific implementation of ІТаррх and its verification in the context of actual use cases.

Cooperativity of hydrogen bonds in the nitroamide crystal: a prototypical case study of low-sensitivity and high-energy explosives

The cooperativity of hydrogen-bond interactions in explosive crystals was revealed computationally.

Environmental Decision Support Systems for Monitoring Small Scale Oil Spills: Existing Solutions, Best Practices and Current Challenges

In recent years, large oil spills have received widespread media attention, while small and micro oil spills are usually only acknowledged by the authorities and local citizens who are directly or indirectly affected by these pollution events. However, small oil spills represent the vast majority of oil pollution events. In this paper, multiple oil spill typologies are introduced, and existing frameworks and methods used as best practices for facing them are reviewed and discussed. Specific tools based on information and communication technologies are then presented, considering in particular those which can be used as integrated frameworks for the specific challenges of the environmental monitoring of smaller oil spills. Finally, a prototype case study actually designed and implemented for the management of existing monitoring resources is reported. This case study helps improve the discussion over the actual challenges of early detection and support to the responsible parties and stakeholders in charge of intervention and remediation operations.

Hybrid photovoltaic module for efficiency improvement through an automatic water cooling system: A prototype case study

Abstract The photovoltaic modules have significant losses in the power generation potential due to heating of the cells by solar irradiation. In this way, the objective of this research is the development of a prototype of Hybrid Photovoltaic Module. It uses an automatic water cooling system aiming to increase its efficiency in converting the solar irradiation into electricity and thermal energies. This work was limited to the design and prototyping of a hybrid photovoltaic module and followed three phases of the product development process: (i) Technologies Background; (ii) Conceptual Model; (iii) Detailed Design and Prototype Development. The results analysis of the developed prototype presented a reduction in the average operating temperature and the increase of the PV panel efficiency. The Hybrid Photovoltaic Module enabled the utilization of two different energy production efficiencies since the module absorbs solar irradiation and transforms this energy into electrical and thermal energies at the same time through heating of the water. The prototype showed an average efficiency improvement of 33.28% when is considered the combined production of electricity and thermal energy. Therefore, the results showed to be promising since it was evident that this type of hybrid module should be applied to tropical countries obtaining higher efficiency and economic advantages due to the solar irradiation available and photovoltaic module temperature control.

Stable States of Boolean Regulatory Networks Composed Over Hexagonal Grids

Cellular processes are governed by complex molecular regulatory networks. To understand the dynamics emerging from these networks, a popular approach relies on a Boolean abstraction. These Boolean regulatory networks define qualitative models with discrete dynamics in which properties of interest relate to the so-called attractors and their reachability. When considering multi-cellular systems, cell-cell communication must be accounted by properly inter-connecting cellular network models. This is done through logical composition rules that define cell-cell communication, leading to a (composed) model of the regulatory control of the whole.This work focuses on Boolean models composed over hexagonal grids, which suitably represent simple epithelia. Stable states embody stable patterns of the grid, i.e., ensembles of differentiated cell types, each characterized by a specific pattern of gene expression. Identification of these stable states is a challenging problem due to the combinatorial explosion of the dimensions of the model state space and to the potentially huge number of solutions.Following the formalisation of model composition, we present a SAT-based method to identify the stable states of Boolean models composed over hexagonal grids. This approach is applied to a few prototypical case studies, illustrating counter-intuitive dependencies of the number of stable states on: the cellular model, the composition rule and the grid characteristics (i.e., dimensions and border conditions).

Warcbase

Web archiving initiatives around the world capture ephemeral Web content to preserve our collective digital memory. However, unlocking the potential of Web archives for humanities scholars and social scientists requires a scalable analytics infrastructure to support exploration of captured content. We present Warcbase, an open-source Web archiving platform that aims to fill this need. Our platform takes advantage of modern open-source “big data” infrastructure, namely Hadoop, HBase, and Spark, that has been widely deployed in industry. Warcbase provides two main capabilities: support for temporal browsing and a domain-specific language that allows scholars to interrogate Web archives in several different ways. This work represents a collaboration between computer scientists and historians, where we have engaged in iterative codesign to build tools for scholars with no formal computer science training. To provide guidance, we propose a process model for scholarly interactions with Web archives that begins with a question and proceeds iteratively through four main steps: filter, analyze, aggregate, and visualize. We call this the FAAV cycle for short and illustrate with three prototypical case studies. This article presents the current state of the project and discusses future directions.

QoC $$^{2}$$ 2 Breaker: intelligent software circuit breakers for fault-tolerant distributed context-aware applications

Reliability is a key concern when distributed context-aware applications assist end-users in intelligent environments. As these adaptive applications are never deployed in isolation, delivering failsafe behavior is a non-trivial challenge. Indeed, they usually operate well in the cool comfort of a lab environment, but may not behave as expected in the real world due to unforeseen circumstances. Furthermore, intelligent environments continuously evolve as end-users install and interconnect new sensors, actuators or other appliances. These observations make it challenging for software engineers to design, develop and deploy context-aware distributed applications that guarantee fault-tolerant behavior under all possible situations. In this work, we advocate a ‘Design for Failure’ approach to build applications that are expected to handle faults gracefully. We use enhanced software circuit breakers for distributed context-aware applications to deliver fault-tolerant intelligent environments. Our QoC \(^{2}\) Breaker framework specializes circuit breakers with notions of Quality of Context to offer context-aware applications a greater stability and resilience against different types of faults. The evaluation of our framework on a prototypical case study shows that it can mitigate circumstances where isolated or transient errors can cascade into catastrophic failures throughout the whole intelligent environment, and this with a limited performance overhead.

Reprogramming of nonfermentative metabolism by stress-responsive transcription factors in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

The fundamental questions of how cells control growth and respond to stresses have captivated scientists for years. Despite the complexity of these cellular processes, we could approach this puzzle by asking our favorite model yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, how it makes a critical decision to either proliferate, to rest in a quiescent state or to program itself to die. This review highlights the essentiality of transcriptional factors in the reprogramming of gene expression as a prime mechanism of cellular stress responses. A whelm of evidence shows that transcriptional factors allow cells to acquire appropriate and unified responses to the transmitted signals. They function to modulate pathway-specific gene expression and organize transcriptomic responses to the altered environments. This review is aimed to summarize current knowledge on the roles of novel and well-known yeast transcription factors in the control of growth and stress responses during glucose deprivation as a prototypical case study. The scope includes stress sensing, transcription factors' identity, gene regulation and proposed crosstalks between pathways, associated with stress responses. A complex commander system of multiple stress-responsive transcription factors, observed here and elsewhere, indicates that regulation of glucose starvation/diauxic shift is a highly sophisticated and well-controlled process, involving elaborative networks of different kinase/target proteins. Using S. cerevisiae as a model, basic genetic research studies on gene identification have once again proved to be essential in the comprehension of molecular basis of cellular stress responses. Insights into this fundamental and highly conserved phenomenon will endow important prospective impacts on biotechnological applications and healthcare improvement.

Advances in Charge Displacement Analysis.

We define new general density-based descriptors for the quantification of charge transfer and polarization effects associated with the interaction between two fragments and the formation of a chemical bond. Our aim is to provide a simple yet accurate picture of a chemical interaction by condensing the information on the charge rearrangement accompanying it into a few chemically meaningful parameters. These charge displacement (CD) parameters quantify the total charge displaced upon bond formation and decompose it into a charge transfer component between the fragments and charge rearrangements taking place within the fragments. We then show how the new parameters can be easily calculated using the well-known CD function, which describes the charge flow along a chosen axis accompanying the formation of a bond. The approach presented here can be useful in a wide variety of contexts, ranging from weak interactions to electronic excitations to coordination chemistry. In particular, we discuss here how the scheme can be used for the characterization of the donation and back-donation components of metal-ligand bonds, in combination with the natural orbitals for chemical valence (NOCV) theory. In doing so, we discuss the interesting relationship between the proposed parameters and the corresponding NOCV eigenvalues, commonly used as a measure of the electron charge displacement associated with a given bonding contribution. As a prototype case study, we investigate the bond between a N-heterocyclic carbene and different metallic fragments. Finally, we show that our approach can be used in combination with the energy decomposition of the extended transition state method, providing an estimate of both charge transfer and polarization contributions to the interaction energy.

Tax Revenue Mobilization in Conflict-Affected Developing Countries

How does conflict affect tax revenue mobilization? This paper uses a newly updated dataset to explore longitudinal trends of tax revenue mobilization prior to, during, and after conflict periods in a selection of conflict-affected states since 1980. This medium-N trend analysis is complemented by prototypical case study analysis, which provides greater insight into the relationship between tax revenue performance over time and the characteristics of the conflicts in question. Offering detailed snapshots of tax experiences prior to, during, and after conflict, this paper provides an empirical counterpoint to theories about the role of taxation in war-making and state building.

A design framework for Smart Cultural Objects

Nowadays cities, as well as Cultural Heritage, are facing new challenges due to the public financial straits and the increasing need to deliver innovative service to manage a wide heritage. Great expectations are in put the Smart City paradigm relying on the capability of the city to realize and scale up intangible infrastructures based on new typologies of partnerships for the development of services. The paper presents a design framework aimed to transform Cultural Items in Smart Cultural Objects (SCO), meant as sources and recipients of advanced information applied on ‘Widespread Built Cultural Heritage’. The aim has been not just to enhance the artifacts with their own quality, but their unique social, communal, anthropological and urban-infrastructural meaning. The ability to manage efficiently heterogeneous data and the levels of global connectivity, as well as the real-time interaction, perception, localization, communication, and identification, made possible by cloud computing and Internet of Things, to allow the changeover from Cultural Objects to SCO. The framework, here exposed, aims to provide an extensive and robust theoretical support to design and to manage the processes of Cultural Objects and Cultural bins, implementing a methodological system and an advanced environment based on ICT technologies for recording, storage, processing, access and presentation of Cultural Heritage (CH) data in a Smart Management environment. The framework has been applied in two projects for a prototypical case study of widespread urban CH. Keywords: cultural heritage, human smart city, co-design, internet of things, heritage management and communication.

Osmostress-induced gene expression--a model to understand how stress-activated protein kinases (SAPKs) regulate transcription.

Adaptation is essential for maximizing cell survival and for cell fitness in response to sudden changes in the environment. Several aspects of cell physiology change during adaptation. Major changes in gene expression are associated with cell exposure to environmental changes, and several aspects of mRNA biogenesis appear to be targeted by signaling pathways upon stress. Exhaustive reviews have been written regarding adaptation to stress and regulation of gene expression. In this review, using osmostress in yeast as a prototypical case study, we highlight those aspects of regulation of gene induction that are general to various environmental stresses as well as mechanistic aspects that are potentially conserved from yeast to mammals.

High‐lateral resolution X‐ray fluorescence microspectroscopy and dynamic mathematical modelling as tools for the study of electrodeposited electrocatalysts

In this paper, we report on the use of high‐space resolution soft X‐ray fluorescence microspectroscopy for the study of electrodeposited composites containing catalytic ternary metal nanostructures. X‐ray fluorescence maps are interpreted in terms of a dynamic mathematical model of the electrode morphology and metal space distribution, allowing to reproduce the observed space patterns and electrochemical transients by assigning an appropriate set of electrokinetic parameters. The discussed materials‐science case is the electrochemical growth of a Mn‐Mg‐Cu‐polypyrrole nanocomposite electrocatalyst material – free of expensive Pt and environmentally unfriendly Co – with promising performance for fuel‐cell oxygen electrodes. The synergy of high‐resolution compositional mapping with electrokinetic modelling not only provides the general rationale for quantitative use of potentially large compositional distribution datasets but also yields unprecedented insight into the specific catalyst synthesis process. The expounded application is just a prototypical case study of a more general approach, which can be employed for the understanding of electrochemical material science processes, both in situ and ex situ, as well as for the characterisation of the corresponding products, with no other limitations in principle than X‐ray transmission and beam damage. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Detectability of CO2 flux signals by a space‐based lidar mission

AbstractSatellite observations of carbon dioxide (CO2) offer novel and distinctive opportunities for improving our quantitative understanding of the carbon cycle. Prospective observations include those from space‐based lidar such as the active sensing of CO2 emissions over nights, days, and seasons (ASCENDS) mission. Here we explore the ability of such a mission to detect regional changes in CO2 fluxes. We investigate these using three prototypical case studies, namely, the thawing of permafrost in the northern high latitudes, the shifting of fossil fuel emissions from Europe to China, and changes in the source/sink characteristics of the Southern Ocean. These three scenarios were used to design signal detection studies to investigate the ability to detect the unfolding of these scenarios compared to a baseline scenario. Results indicate that the ASCENDS mission could detect the types of signals investigated in this study, with the caveat that the study is based on some simplifying assumptions. The permafrost thawing flux perturbation is readily detectable at a high level of significance. The fossil fuel emission detectability is directly related to the strength of the signal and the level of measurement noise. For a nominal (lower) fossil fuel emission signal, only the idealized noise‐free instrument test case produces a clearly detectable signal, while experiments with more realistic noise levels capture the signal only in the higher (exaggerated) signal case. For the Southern Ocean scenario, differences due to the natural variability in the El Niño–Southern Oscillation climatic mode are primarily detectable as a zonal increase.

Modelling and Simulation for the Integrated Design of Mechatronic Systems

The development of mechatronic systems involves the use of multiple disciplines, from mechanical engineering to electronics engineering and computer science. Traditionally, every discipline was developed independently and then integrated to generate the final system. However, high quality designs cannot be achieved without simultaneously considering all the engineering disciplines. This mechatronic approach carries intrinsic complexity into system design process and numerous researches are on-going in order to find out optimal methods. This article refines a SysML-based design process for the high level development of mechatronic systems, focusing on the integration of modelling and simulation as fundamental aspect for an integrated approach. How conceptual SysML diagrams may support the generation of simulation models is shown, along with a chain of simulations for an integrated design. The proposed approach is applied to a prototype case study designed from scratch, in order to be validated and to demonstrate its potentiality.

A visual interactive method for service prototyping

Purpose– Despite the importance of the service design process, existing prototyping methods still have technical limitations, thus hampering the development of realistic service-experience simulations that can effectively reproduce service delivery situations and environments. In this study, a service-prototyping method based on 3D virtual reality (VR) technologies, the physical environment of a test bed, and related standard management procedures are described. In addition, a service-prototyping process for a servicescape is proposed based on a case study of an actual duty-free shop. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach– The study adopts a qualitative approach, using case studies to undertake a design and improvement plans for brand guidance structures for the brand observation convenience of customers in a duty-free shop.Findings– The findings of the study suggested environmental components and concept of 3D VR based test bed as an effective tool at the stage of service prototyping the core of new service development (NSD), and introduced practical methods for service prototyping in actual duty-free shop. The case study is significant due to the fact that it proved validity and practicality of the methods applied to service prototyping topic derivation and test process through target service analysis rather than optimal alternative selection.Practical implications– This study emphasizes the importance of prototyping during NSD and the value of the service prototyping test bed for practical use. It also proposes guidelines for the establishment and management of the test bed.Originality/value– In terms of service design research, this study also presented detailed operating procedures and methods through the new concept and in-depth case study of service prototyping using 3D VR technology.

An innovative synergistic grid approach to the computational study of protein aggregation mechanisms.

Thanks to the advances in grid technologies, we are able to propose here an evolution of our molecular simulator that, when moving to larger systems, instead of reducing the granularity of the dynamical treatment (as is often done in molecular dynamics studies of such systems) exploits the extra power of the grid approach to the end of preserving the detailed nature of theatomistic formulation of the interaction. Key steps of such evolution are: (1) the assemblage of the interaction based on a composition of the ab initio intramolecular data and a portable parameterization of the intermolecular potential linking ab initio evaluation of intramolecular potentials and the partitioning of molecular polarizability; (2) the exploitation of an efficient coordinated porting and running of molecular dynamics codes on the European grid distributed computing infrastructure. As a prototype case study, the N-methylacetamide dimer in vacuo has been considered and the formation of possible conformers is analyzed.