Real Limits Research Articles

Evaluation of legal information services in the law libraries of federal universities in South-South, Nigeria

This study evaluated the legal information services in law libraries in federal universities in South-South, Nigeria. The descriptive design was adopted in the study. It was guided by five objectives, from which five research questions and null hypotheses were developed. The population of the study was 3564 persons consisting of 133 lecturers, 3431 students and 20 librarians. The sample for the study was 713 persons comprising 133 lecturers, 560 students and 20 librarians. Structured questionnaire entitled: “Legal Information Services Evaluation Questionnaire (LISEQ)”. A total of 713 copies of the questionnaire were administered to respondents but 704 copies were retrieved, giving rate of 98.7%. The data collected were analysed using frequency counts, percentages, mean, standard deviation and real limit on numbers in order to answer research questions while Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The study revealed that legal information services available in the law libraries include general reference services (CAS), photocopying services, routing current periodicals etc. The study revealed legal information services that were effective to include photocopying services, routing of current periodicals etc., inadequate funding, scarcity/high cost of law books, gap in subscription of law reports etc., were problems discovered affecting law library services. It was concluded that the law library services understudied are moderately available which shows the need for improvement. It was recommended that adequate funding should be available to the law libraries to acquire books, law report, journals etc., recruitment of qualified law librarians for effective running of law libraries etc.

QUANTITATIVE ASSESSMENT OF TECHNOLOGICAL SINGULARITY

The article deals with the topical issue of quantitative assessment of technological singularity. The authors made an analysis of artificial intelligence tools and approaches affecting the development of superintelligence, which allowed for the first time to develop a general multifactor model of technological singularity and present it in the space of direct and indirect indicators of development. The developed approach makes it possible to move from expert judgments on the issue of technological singularity in the form of extrapolated complexity curves of various systems or qualitative description of possible scenarios of technological development to quantitative assessment of the state of technological singularity. The links between the relevant functional areas of human intelligence and modern expert systems are formalized, a structural-functional model of knowledge acquisition is developed. A conclusion is made about the real limits of the processes of modern "intelligent" systems at the level of artificial thinking and logical cognition, which corresponds to a weak artificial intelligence. The state and ways of hardware development were analyzed, which allowed making a conclusion about the complex use of different hardware architectures and information processing principles: supercomputer, neurosynaptic and quantum computers to implement the concept of technological singularity. Formalized in the form of a structural model the areas of research most influential in the development of artificial intelligence, and their relationship to existing approaches and methods of processing big data. For the first time proposed the classification of indicators of development of artificial intelligence within two classes: direct and indirect, grouped into three groups: the intensity of research and public activity; the level of applied (technological) solutions; practical implementation, most affecting the development of general artificial intelligence. The correlation between the formalized groups of indicators was revealed, which confirms the correctness of the hypothesis about the cause-effect relationship between the groups: theoretical research → applied solutions → practical implementation and their mutual influence.

Topological Essence of the Concept “Limit of a Function” in the General Mathematics

The limit of a function is one of the most important concepts in high school mathematics. But unfortunately, not many students understand the essence of this concept. They had to accept it. This paper presents the topological essence of a limit of a function and discusses methods for teaching this concept in general education in Viet Nam. It consists of four parts. Part 1 talks about the definition of “Limit of a function”, part 2 covers the Mathematical essence of the concept limit of a function, part 3 deals with Defining the limit of a function in a topological space of real numbers and part 4 presents Adding a topology on the set of real numbers and limit of a function. In each section, we include comments to help teach these notions and concepts.

American Unemployment: Past, Present, and Future

American Unemployment: Past, Present, and Future

Breaking with the Family Form: Historical Categories, Social Reproduction, and Everyday Life in Late 1950s Rural China

AbstractThis article explores the way PRC historians use analytical categories by looking at the emergence of a divide between production and the social reproduction of labor (all the work that goes into producing and raising laborers) that transformed and structured rural everyday life during the Mao period. Everyday life is historical, produced in different ways under different material conditions, structured and shaped by social forms in motion. Thus, it is not an analytical frame through which historians can view the real content of the Mao period underneath the thin veneer of Maoist high politics and its categories. This article therefore argues that everyday life, far from a sphere resisting the impositions and dictates of the state, is fully implicated in the political-economic structuring of society. This is a call to not simply replace an earlier social science focus on the political economy of the PRC with a bottom-up or empirical view of everyday life, recognizing that everyday life is already a structured terrain. Rather than bringing in social science analytical categories from the outside or searching for an empirical real view from below, we need to investigate the emergence of categories and social forms from the real material limits and tendencies of a rapidly changing PRC society.

Robust model predictive control for hypersonic vehicle with state‐dependent input constraints and parameter uncertainty

AbstractIn this article, a robust model predictive control strategy based on sum‐of‐squares (SOS‐RMPC) is proposed for hypersonic vehicle with state‐dependent input constraints and uncertain parameters. Based on feedback linearization model of hypersonic vehicle, the polytopic linear parameter varying error model with bounded disturbance is established for reference trajectory tracking. The real limits of the actual control inputs are transformed into the constraints of the virtual inputs equivalently with the state‐dependent nonlinear functions. Further, the multivariate linear fitting is used to approximate the state‐dependent input constraints into polynomials. A weighted composite virtual control is formulated as the combination of unconstrained control and auxiliary control. SOS technique is introduced to cast the polynomial constraints into the convex matrix SOS conditions via linear matrix inequality. The virtual control law can be obtained by solving a SOS‐RMPC convex optimization with infinite horizon. The invariant set is designed for the undisturbed error states and the norm‐bounding theory is applied to ensure that the predictive error states with disturbance can remain in the same invariant set. The real control law is obtained by inverse control. The simulation verifies the performance of the designed controller.

스마트 인버터의 주파수-유효전력 제어를 위한 하드웨어 시뮬레이터

This paper presents a hardware simulator for a Frequency-Watt control in smart inverters. The power plant generator rotates at a constant speed, which is related to the frequency of the grid. The frequency of the grid is determined by the balance of power generation and power consumption. In addition, frequency fluctuations occur due to sudden changes in load or accidents. To reduce fluctuations and improve stability of grid system, the Frequency-Watt control in smart inverters was introduced. The PLL (Phase Locked Loop) control in various situations is important for grid-connected inverter to detect grid frequency. The real power limit of the smart inverter is controlled by the detected frequency to support grid stabilization. In this paper, the development of a hardware simulator for the Frequency-Watt control in smart inverters using three-level topology is introduced. The validity and performance of the proposed hardware simulator and its control strategies are demonstrated by various experimental results.

Atopic Dermatitis and Patient Perspectives: Insights of Bullying at School and Career Discrimination at Work

BackgroundAtopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease characterized by recurrent eczematous lesions and intense pruritus. AD patients are known to face a considerable disease burden, including physical and emotional limitations. There is still limited knowledge about daily implications in education and occupation. We describe disease social stigmatization by measuring bullying and self-isolation in students and professional discrimination in workers. Overall loss of productivity, either at school and at the workplace, was quantified as the sum of absenteeism (number of days AD sick leave) and presenteeism (number of days with decreased focus and functionality).MethodsAn on-line web survey was sent to 3235 random recipients and 401 met the inclusion criteria (self-reporting AD and ≥12 yo). The survey domains included daily limitations, QoL, feelings and relationships, together with specific questions about bullying, discrimination and loss of productivity.ResultsAD negatively affected QoL in 51.6% of respondents, whereas 68.8% considered AD as a real limit to daily routine. More in detail, 39.3% of students were victims of bullying and 33.9% of workers felt discriminated because of AD. On average, absenteeism in students was for 17.1 days/year (presenteeism: 19.5 days/year), whereas in workers, the estimate was 10.9 days/year (presenteeism: 13.1 days/year). Absenteeism and presenteeism were more pronounced in bullied/discriminated subjects.ConclusionAD multidimensional implications deeply affect and undermine personal and professional fulfillments. Our results contribute to a better understanding of what living with AD means.

Perceived Parental Involvement in School Activities in Secondary Schools in South-East Nigeria

Aims: The study ascertained perceived parental involvement in school activities in secondary schools in South-east Nigeria.
 Study design: Descriptive survey research design.
 Place and duration of study: Secondary school students in South-east Nigeria, between 2019/2020.
 Methodology: The study used simple random sampling technique to draw 520 (200 male and 320 female) senior secondary school II students from the total population. Specifically, the toss of die type of simple random sampling was used to draw the sample. The instrument for data collection is a structured questionnaire titled “Students perception on the extent of parental involvement in school activities questionnaire (SPEPISAQ)”. The reliability of the instrument and internal consistency of the questionnaire items were established using Cronbach Alpha statistics which yield an overall reliability coefficient of 0.88, indicating a high-level reliability of the items in the instrument. Data collected were analysed using mean and standard deviation (for research questions). The t-test statistics was used to test the hypotheses raised. The item analysis was based on real limit of numbers ranging from 1.00-1.49 (very low extent) to 3.50-4.00 (very high extent), and the decision rule for the null hypotheses was thus; do not reject the null hypotheses if the significant value is greater than the p-value, otherwise reject the null hypotheses if the calculated value is less than the p-value at 0.05.
 Results: A grand mean of 3.14 which indicates that students’ perception on the extent of parental involvement in debate activities is to high extent. The standard deviation score ranges from 0.66 – 1.01, this shows that students are heterogeneous in their rating. The data analysis revealed that the significant value is greater than the alpha value (Sig. value = 1.021, P value=0.05), hence, the extent of parental involvement in debate activities in secondary schools is not statistically significant based on gender. The results further revealed a grand mean of 3.16 which indicates that students’ perception on the extent of parental involvement in school publication activities is to a high extent. The standard deviation score ranges from 0.59 – 1.11, this shows that students are heterogeneous in their response. The corresponding hypothesis tested revealed that the significant value is greater than the alpha value (Sig. value = 0.006, P value=0.05). This goes to show that the extent of parental involvement in school publication in secondary schools is not statistically significant based on gender. More so, the analysis resulted with a grand mean of 2.12 which indicates that students’ perception on the extent of parental involvement in school club activities is to a low extent. The standard deviation scores range from 0.49 – 0.94, this shows that students are homogeneous in their response. The result further showed that the significant value is less than the alpha value (Sig. value = 0.002, P value=0.05). this goes to show that the extent of parental involvement in school club activities in secondary schools is not statistically significant based on gender.
 Conclusion: Based on the findings of this study it was concluded that, students’ perception on the extent of parental involvement in debate activities is to high extent, the extent of parental involvement in school publication activities is to a high extent, the extent of parental involvement in school club activities is to a low extent. The extent of parental involvement in school publication in secondary schools is not statistically significant, Also, the extent of parental involvement in debate activities in secondary schools is not statistically significant. Finally, the extent of parental involvement in school club activities in secondary schools is not statistically significant based on gender.

Malaysian and Indonesian Batik: The Best Practices

Malaysian artisans continue to produce crafts and visual art based on a well-tried formula: an inherited framework determined by tradition. However, new ideas and expressions are constantly being developed—with the only real limit being the imagination of the artist/craftsman. Batik sits uniquely in Indonesian culture as it has been declared by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as its cultural heritage and has been awarded ‘Best Practice’ in its education and production of batik (Kepres, 2009). Indonesia also celebrates its National Batik Day on October 2nd every year. The word batik in Malaysia generally describes the process of decorating cloth using the block printing (cap) or hand-drawn (canting) techniques, or a combination of both. The method of dyeing and coloring varies with the use of materials of various textures, such as cotton, silk, rayon and organza. It may also be identified by the range of traditional designs and motifs used. Batik has become a symbol of national pride and a form of attire for all races. Batik is ingrained in Malaysian culture. Indonesia is aggressive in its efforts in promoting batik as a national identity. The love for batik is instilled through batik-related subjects offered at primary and secondary school levels. In Malaysia, education about batik is introduced at the secondary level.
 Keywords: Malaysian and Indonesian batik, best practices

NEEDS TO ADOPT PROFESSIONAL ETHICAL STANDARD IN SECRETARIAL PRACTICE IN THE ERA OF ICT FOR OPTIMUM PRODUCTIVITY IN ORGANIZATIONS

The study was designed to determine the need to adopt professional ethical standard in secretarial practice in the era of ICT for optimum productivity in organizations. The population of the study consisted of 182 respondents which is made up of Office Technology and Management lecturers programme and managers of organizations in Asaba metropolis in Delta State. A structured questionnaire which was validated by three experts guided the study. Cronbach Alpha technique was used to establish the reliability of the instrument before it was administered on the respondents. Data collected were analyzed using mean and standard deviation. Z-test was used to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. A 4 point rating scale was used as a guide for respondents. The boundary real limit was that any item with mean value of 2.50 was regarded as agreed, while any mean item with mean value of less than 2.50 was regarded as disagreed. It was concluded that respondents agreed that there is need to adopt ethical standard for secretarial practice, also that there is the need to be aware of special skills for secretarial practice in the era of ICT for optimum productivity. It was recommended among others that professional secretaries should be abreast with ethical standard and special skills required to excel in the ICT era for optimum productivity in organizations.

Dynamic reliability analysis of mechanical system with wear and vibration failure modes

The wear and vibration of machine tool system are coupled and time-variant, which have significant influences on the dynamic performance of machine tool feed drive system in different time scales. In this study, the coupling effects between the wear of linear guide and the vibration of machine worktable system are studied based on the infinitesimal method. A nonlinear dynamic model is developed to analyze the wear and vibration failure mechanisms considering the uncertainty of parameters. To evaluate the dynamic reliability of the machine worktable system under multi-failure modes, a time-variant and conditional reliability approach based on the active learning Kriging model and Monte Carlo Simulation is proposed. The approach gets rid of repeated calculating of the real limit state function values and the calculation efficiency is enhanced greatly. Additionally, reliability-based sensitivity indices are presented to investigate the significance of random parameters to the reliability of the system. Besides of the reliability analysis for machine worktable systems, the proposed framework and corresponding method are also suitable for the reliability evaluation of other complex mechanical systems with the conditional multi-failure modes.

Going Dark

Going Dark

Multi-objective optimization of optimal placement and sizing of multiple DG placements in radial distribution system using stud krill herd algorithm

This paper presents the Stud krill herd algorithm (SKHA) implementation to find the optimal location and sizing of DG units in a radial distribution system. In recent years, distributed generation (DG) plays an important role in the electric power industry. DG units are connected to the system mainly for improving voltage stability, real power loss reduction, reliability, grid strengthening, and reduction of SO2, CO2 gas emission. The problem formulation is based on the multi-objective function. This work focuses on real power loss reduction, cost minimization, and improvement of voltage stability and formulates a single objective function with suitable weightage preference subject to various constraints like voltage limit, DG real power limit, power balance constraint, and DG location limit. The algorithm has been tested on IEEE 33 bus, 69 bus, and 94 bus radial systems at different load levels with DG placement. The obtained simulation results are compared with other methods. The comparison reveals that the proposed algorithm offers a better solution for the optimal placement of DG in the radial distribution system with faster convergence.

The usage of pedagogical principles for the adaptation of foreign experience to the educational process of the educational institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia

The research subject is the peculiarities of using foreign experience in the pedagogical process of educational organizations of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. The research object is the range of conceptual approaches to the application of the general principles of understanding foreign experience and using it for the creation of pedagogical techniques. The authors study such aspects of the topic as the scientific interpretation of pedagogical techniques of embedding foreign experience into the educational process of educational institutions.  Special attention is given to the consideration of the common principles of interpretation of foreign experience and their usage for the creation of pedagogical techniques. The authors offer the directions of the development of pedagogical techniques with account for the principles of foreign experience interpretation: the usage of foreign experience as an element of education; the usage of foreign experience for the improvement of teaching methods. The main conclusions of the research are the proposed principles of using international experience as an element of education and for the creation of specific teaching methods. The authors’ contribution is the proposed principles of embedding foreign experience into the pedagogical process of educational institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia.  The scientific novelty of the research consists in the usage of foreign experience based on the following principles: principle of equality of goals; principle of the experience system specification; principle of a real limit of experience; principle of variability; principle of “psychological allergy” prevention; principle of the formation of an “image of experience”; principle of information sufficiency; principle of analogies; principle of inevitability of proof; principle of inclusiveness; principle of reasonable non-use of foreign experience.   

DeepSign: Deep On-Line Signature Verification

Deep learning has become a breathtaking technology in the last years, overcoming traditional handcrafted approaches and even humans for many different tasks. However, in some tasks, such as the verification of handwritten signatures, the amount of publicly available data is scarce, what makes difficult to test the real limits of deep learning. In addition to the lack of public data, it is not easy to evaluate the improvements of novel proposed approaches as different databases and experimental protocols are usually considered. The main contributions of this study are: i) we provide an in-depth analysis of state-of-the-art deep learning approaches for on-line signature verification, ii) we present and describe the new DeepSignDB on-line handwritten signature biometric public database, iii) we propose a standard experimental protocol and benchmark to be used for the research community in order to perform a fair comparison of novel approaches with the state of the art, and iv) we adapt and evaluate our recent deep learning approach named Time-Aligned Recurrent Neural Networks (TA-RNNs) for the task of on-line handwritten signature verification. This approach combines the potential of Dynamic Time Warping and Recurrent Neural Networks to train more robust systems against forgeries. Our proposed TA-RNN system outperforms the state of the art, achieving results even below 2.0% EER when considering skilled forgery impostors and just one training signature per user.

Semiconducting α'-boron sheet with high mobility and low all-boron contact resistance: a first-principles study.

Two-dimensional field effect transistors (2D FETs) with high mobility semiconducting channels and low contact resistance between the semiconducting channel and the metallic electrodes are highly sought components of future electronics. Recently, 2D boron sheets (borophene) offer a great platform for realizing ideal 2D FETs but stable semiconducting phases still remain much unexplored. Herein, based on first-principles calculations and tight-binding model, we first clarify that α'-boron is the most stable semiconductor phase of boron sheets, while reveal the mechanism of metal-to-semiconductor transition from α- to α'-boron. Then we demonstrate that the carrier mobility in α'- and metastable β3S-boron should be very high, due to small effective masses of electrons and holes, as a good candidate material for 2D FETs. Considering further the lateral contacts between semiconducting α' and metallic borophene, we find that the α'- and β3S-boron sheet can form Ohmic contacts with selected metallic boron sheets, without Schottky barrier. The high energetic stability and excellent mobility properties of α'-boron sheet together with its good contact match to metallic borophene electrodes are promising for fully boron-based FETs in the real 2D atomically thin limit.

Modal split analysis through the traffic volumes

The article deals with the analysis of the modal split in Žilina self-region (ŽSK) during the morning and afternoon peak hours. The results are based on a mobility survey in the region. Households and inhabitants were divided into three main groups of the population. The first group characterized the inhabitants in the district towns, the second group in the other towns and the third covered the villages. The modal split was analyzed for all main groups and the most numerous subgroup - economically active people. In parallel with the analysis of mobility data, we analyzed data from the traffic surveys on several congested profiles. From the results, we determined the amount of traffic above the real road capacity limit. In the last part of the article, we present an example of combining data from the mobility and transport surveys. We defined the number of trips that need to be transferred to another transport system - the train.

Making the Medieval Relevant: How Medieval Studies Contribute to Improving Our Understanding of the Present, ed. Chris Jones, Conor Kostick, and Klaus Oschema. Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung, Beihefte, 6. Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2020, 297 pp.

The question raised here is currently one of the most urgent ones concerning our entire field, and it would be fantastic if the contributors to this volume might indeed provide us with some powerful answers that would satisfy both the general reader, the colleagues in the modern fields, the university administrators, and, above all, educational politicians who often tend to disrespect the Middle Ages and history at large, along with the Humanities, Social Sciences, the Arts, and other related fields. If we accept that we as human beings are historically grounded and form our identity and culture by means of many different sources, many of which go back to the past, then there is no real limit to the various periods and cultures that need to be consulted by every new generation. This position seems to be so self-evident that most scholars leave it at that, and then ignore the great need to justify their discipline much more aggressively today than ever before, especially because the increasingly digitized and robotized world we are living in is painfully focused on the present, and this to the disadvantage both of the past and the future.

A Religious Double Standard: Post-9/11 Challenges to Muslims’ Religious Land Usage

Muslims in the United States face real limits on their religious freedom. Numerous influential individuals and organizations even posit that Islam is not a religion and that, therefore, Muslims do not have rights to religious freedom. The claim is that Islam is a political ideology that is intent on taking over the country and subverting Americans’ constitutional rights. This narrative has gained momentum since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and continues to be amplified and disseminated by a well-funded cadre of anti-Muslim agitators. One area where its effects can be seen clearly is in religious land use, where a concerted effort to deprive Muslims of basic rights frustrates the aims and principles of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).