Special Scheme Research Articles

An appraisal of home ownership for senior citizens in Nigeria

PurposeThe Nigerian Government has been left behind in the planning of homes for the senior citizens as they are aged and retire from service. The possible outcome is untimely death of many because of contagious illness associated with the dilapidated environment in their abode. Hence, this paper attempts to investigate the hindrances of home ownership faced by senior citizens and proffers possible policy solutions.Design/methodology/approachA phenomenology type of qualitative research was adopted and 30 participants were interviewed. That is, ten from four different state government agencies and 20 senior citizens using purposive and snowball sampling techniques and data saturation was also achieved. The data derived were analysed using MAXQDA 2018 and through a thematic analysis.FindingsThis paper found that Nigerian low-income senior citizens (LISCs) who owned houses lived more stable well-being. Whilst the level of home ownership was completely dissatisfying as failed mortgage finance, corruption in the pension scheme, relaxed National Housing Policy implementation and inadequate senior citizens’ home ownership policy were identified as the encumbrances.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is limited to exploring the root cause of LISCs’ inability to gain home ownership and proffering possible solutions. Future research is needed to use relevant information in advancing home ownership policy for the low-income groups across the states in Nigeria and other developing countries.Practical implicationsThis paper recommended that government should impose housing construction on three acres and above, mitigate corruption, establish special housing loan scheme for senior citizens, sustain rent-to-own policy and land subsidy in cities to enhance senior citizens’ home ownership. These recommendations form part of the paper's practical implications.Originality/valueThis paper demonstrates that existing housing policies are yet to consider the senior citizens regarding enhancing their home ownership status.

Ensino de Epidemiologia durante pandemia de COVID-19

A suspensão de atividades presenciais de ensino decorrentes da pandemia de COVID-19 trouxe modificações na vida de milhares de acadêmicos e docentes. Este estudo teve por objetivo descrever um relato de experiência sobre a adaptação pedagógica para o ensino remoto de tópicos em Epidemiologia em uma instituição de ensino superior pública. Trata-se de um estudo descritivo que incluiu três disciplinas ofertadas regularmente pelos cursos presenciais de Enfermagem e Farmácia que tiveram planejamento didático adequado para ensino via Regime de Exercícios Domiciliares Especiais. Os planos de ensino e metodologias foram adaptados para utilização de tecnologias digitais e ambiente virtual de aprendizagem. O cenário epidemiológico foi utilizado como base para questões norteadoras e análises de situação na abordagem adaptada dos conteúdos. Quanto à estrutura geral das disciplinas e potencialidades do ensino durante a pandemia, verificou-se que adoção de metodologias ativas com a problematização e subsídio no contexto atual da COVID-19 e a valorização do conhecimento prévio dos acadêmicos sobre o tema figuram como potenciais e determinantes para o aprendizado ativo e desenvolvimento de competências importantes para os futuros profissionais de saúde. A adaptação permitiu desenvolvimento de todos os tópicos de ensino de Epidemiologia e a conexão mantida entre docentes e discentes mostrou-se importante aliada no enfrentamento da pandemia. Reitera-se que as limitações do ensino remoto, como falta de acesso à internet e utilização de tecnologias digitais, precisam seguir amplamente discutidas pelas instituições.

Developing a sustainable model of Waqf-based Takaful for flood victims in Malaysia

Purpose Given the scarcity of Takaful products to provide financial preparation for flood victims, this study aims to propose an alternative Takaful model based on Waqf principle for the flood victims in Malaysia. This study serves as an initial stage to propose the above Takaful model and discusses the theoretical background of the model, which includes identifying the suitable Islamic principles and roles of parties involve in the model framework. Design/methodology/approach To achieve the said objectives, this paper reviews previous studies, opinions of scholars and existing Takaful models that are currently offered in the market. Findings In an effort to alleviate the financial burden of businesses and individuals affected by flood, Takaful industry needs to offer a special Takaful scheme to the flood victims and achieve its main objective to prepare a financial protection for social well-being. There is no harm for the various institutions (Takaful operators and State Islamic Religious Council) to do collaboration in realizing the Waqf-based Takaful model to ensure it is done in its original form to achieve the maqasid Shariah. Practical implications As an Islamic entity, the objective of Takaful business should focus on assisting the society in reducing their financial burden rather than just concentrating on achieving business profit. Thus, Waqf-based Takaful model would give platform to the operators to play their role in the society. Originality/value The views discussed in this paper originally from the researchers which is done by integrating the Islamic principles and roles of all stakeholders that may involve to implement Waqf-based Takaful model mainly for risk and financial protection for the future flood victims. The proposed framework discussed in this paper is in original form as a result of literatures and market practice in Malaysia.

AxSA: On the Design of High-Performance and Power-Efficient Approximate Systolic Arrays for Matrix Multiplication

Compute-bound problems like matrix-matrix multiplication can be accelerated using special purpose hardware scheme such as Systolic Arrays (SAs). However, processing elements in SAs have a long critical path delay, thus limiting the performance benefits of SAs. This paper presents a scheme to achieve high-performance matrix multiplication using SAs. Two approximate matrix multiplier designs (Ax1 and Ax2) of variable accuracy/power are proposed. The proposed designs (8-bit) achieve an improvement of 32% in terms of critical path delay and for scale-up variants (32-bit) the improvement in delay and energy scale upto 64% and 51%, respectively. Moreover, Ax1 and Ax2 have a reduced power-delay product compared to previous approximate matrix multiplier designs. This leads to an improved resolution of the prior accuracy-energy Pareto front; therefore, we define a new Pareto front for approximate matrix multipliers. As a case study, the discrete cosine transform is evaluated. Ax2 achieves the best quality-power trade-off and it exhibits a 5% degradation in structural similarity index (SSIM) with a power saving of 28%.

Vehicle for inclusion or costly illusion? A critical policy analysis of the Special Needs Assistant scheme in Ireland

The Special Needs Assistant (SNA) scheme has been in existence in Ireland, in various different iterations, since 1979. This article presents a critical policy analysis of two iterations of the scheme, operational between 1998 and 2014, using a hybrid analytical framework. It highlights the contextual factors influencing those iterations, presents an interdiscursive analysis of the key policy texts and highlights the scheme's many consequences using secondary data from two key Irish Government agencies. It is postulated that cyclical analytical frameworks are most effective at evaluating iterative special education policies, like the SNA scheme, because they allow sufficient scope to demonstrate that the consequence of one iteration ultimately becomes the context for the next. This article also shows that, while the provision of inclusive education for children with special educational needs in mainstream classes may have been an objective of the scheme, the extent to which that was realised is arguable.

Subtraction singularity technique applied to the regularization of singular and hypersingular integrals in high-order curved boundary elements in plane anisotropic elasticity

The numerical solutions of boundary integral equations by the Boundary Element Method (BEM) have been applied in several areas of computational engineering and science such as elasticity and fracture mechanics. The BEM formulations often require the evaluation of complex singular and hypersingular integrals. Therefore, BEM requires special integration schemes for singular elements. The Subtraction Singularity Technique (SST) is a general procedure for evaluating such integrals, which allows for the integral over high-order curved boundary elements. The SST regularises these kernels through the Taylor expansion of the integral kernels around the source point. This study presents the expressions from Taylor expansions, which are required for the regularization of singular and hypersingular boundary integral equations of plane linear anisotropic elasticity. These expressions have been implemented into an academic BEM code, which enables the integration over high-order straight and curved boundary elements. The proposed scheme leads to excellent performance. The results obtained by the proposed scheme are in excellent agreement with reference responses available in the literature.

Study of the Spectrumof Low-Frequency Current Fluctuations in Filaments of Electric Lamps

We study experimentally the spectral characteristics of low-frequency current fluctuations in tungsten filaments of lighting lamps in the ranges of frequencies 2.5・10−4 – 5・10−1 Hz and temperatures 1260 – 2600 K. To decrease the influence of the edge effects and increase the measurement accuracy, we use subtraction (compensation) of the constant component of the current. Application of special schemes allowed decreasing significantly the influence of the inherent noise of power supplies which are used to feed the lamp filaments. It is found that low-frequency current fluctuations are a randomly time-interleaved aggregate of four random processes: relaxation, pulsed, stepwise, and quasi-continuous ones. We show that relative fluctuations do not exceed 3 ・ 10−4 in the entire range of the studied frequencies, and the frequency dependence of the spectral power density is well approximated by a function having the form 1/fγ and the index γ of the power spectral density within the (1.6 – 1.8) ± 0.2 limits. The dependence of the parameters of the power spectral density of low-frequency current fluctuations on the average value of the current and the volume-average temperature is studied. In our opinion, the revealed features of low-frequency fluctuations are related to the electron, atomic, and degradation processes in lamp filaments.

A Simple Parallel Solution Method for the Navier–Stokes Cahn–Hilliard Equations

We present a discretization method of the Navier–Stokes Cahn–Hilliard equations which offers an impressing simplicity, making it easy to implement a scalable parallel code from scratch. The method is based on a special pressure projection scheme with incomplete pressure iterations. The resulting scheme admits solution by an explicit Euler method. Hence, all unknowns decouple, which enables a very simple implementation. This goes along with the opportunity of a straightforward parallelization, for example, by few lines of Open Multi-Processing (OpenMP) or Message Passing Interface (MPI) routines. Using a standard benchmark case of a rising bubble, we show that the method provides accurate results and good parallel scalability.

Full-polaron master equation approach to dynamical steady states of a driven two-level system beyond the weak system-environment coupling

We apply a full-polaron master equation and a weak-coupling non-Markovian master equation to describe the steady-state time-averaged properties of a driven two-level system, an electron coherently tunneling between double quantum dots (DQDs), interacting with a bosonic phonon bath. Comparing the results obtained using these two master equations with those from a recent DQD experiment and its corresponding weak-coupling theoretical method, we find that the original parameter set used in the experiment and theoretical method is not in the weak-coupling parameter regime. By using the full-polaron master equation with a slight adjustment on only the value of the interdot separation in the original experimental parameter set, we find that a reasonable fit to the experimentally measured time-averaged steady-state population data can be achieved. The adjusted interdot separation is within the possible values allowed by the geometry of the surface gates that define the DQD in the experiment. Our full-polaron equation approach does not require the special renormalization scheme employed in their weak-coupling theoretical method, and can still describe the experimental results of driving-induced phonon-enhanced steplike shoulder behaviors in the experiment. This demonstrates that the full-polaron master equation approach is a correct and efficient tool to describe the steady-state properties of a driven spin-boson model in the case of strong system-environment coupling.

Piezoelectric inertial rotary actuator operating in two-step motion mode for eliminating backward motion

The backward motion phenomenon is widespread in inertial impact, stick-slip, and parasitic piezoelectric actuators, and seriously limits the development of these actuators for micro-manipulation applications. To solve this problem, a piezoelectric inertial rotary actuator based on a special wiring scheme is proposed. By changing the pair of piezoelectric vibrators in the traditional actuator to have opposite connection modes, the proposed actuator implements a two-step operating mode over one cycle and suffers no backward motion. Thus, the proposed actuator essentially eliminates the backward motion phenomenon under all conditions. Compared with other methods for controlling backward motion, which typically require additional friction-control or complex signal-control systems, the proposed wiring method has the advantages of simplicity of structure, ease of control, and high stability.

BSV-PAGS: Blockchain-based special vehicles priority access guarantee scheme

Traffic jams often occur, with the increasing number of private cars. Special vehicles (e.g. police cars, ambulances and fire trucks) often encounter traffic jams when carrying out emergency tasks, which may lead to unexpected consequences (e.g. causing serious damage to our routine and property). In order to ensure that special vehicles can quickly pass through crowded road and arrive at the accident scene in time, this paper proposes a blockchain-based special vehicles priority access guarantee scheme (BSV-PAGS). In BSV-PAGS, we introduce blockchain into the Internet of Things (IoT), and construct a decentralized distributed edge node network based on blockchian, which guarantees the information sharing among the edge nodes as well as processing the data efficiently. The intelligent terminal device will upload the special vehicle information to the edge node in the blockchain, and then the uploaded information will sync to each edge node through the information sharing smart contract, realizing the information sharing among the edge nodes. In addition, we use machine learning method (e.g. Bag of Visual Words and Support Vector Machine) to design and train special vehicle detectors to improve the recognition accuracy of special vehicles. We design a special vehicle priority access smart contract to achieve real-time scheduling of vehicles and ultimately ensure the priority of special vehicles. Then, we carried out a security analysis of BSV-PAGS. Finally, we test a large number of simulation experiments based on Ethereum clients. The experimental results show that our scheme is feasible and effective.

Stochastic Mesh Method for Optimal Stopping Problems

This paper considers the application of the stochastic mesh method in solving the multidimensional optimal stopping problem for a diffusion process with nonlinear payoff functions. A special discretization scheme of the diffusion process is presented to solve the problem in the case of geometric average Asian option payoff functions. This discretization scheme makes it possible to eliminate singularities in transition probabilities. Next, two estimates are given of the solution of the problem by the stochastic mesh method for the case of the stochastic mesh transition probabilities defined as averaged densities. The consistency of the estimates is proven. It is shown that the variance of the estimates is inversely proportional to the number of points in each mesh layer. The result extends the application area of the stochastic mesh method and methods for treating Asian options. A numerical example of the result of applying the obtained estimates to the call and put options compared to the obtained option prices using a regular mesh is presented.

Review of the rules on the special scheme for small enterprises under the VAT Directive 2006/112/EC

On 18 January 2018 the Commission adopted a proposal for a Council Directive amending Directive 2006/112/EC on the common system of value added tax as regards the special scheme for small enterprises. The proposal belongs to the reform package announced in the VAT Action Plan aimed at modernising the EU VAT system in order to make it simpler, more fraud-proof and business-friendly.
 The proposal aims at updating the VAT rules on the special scheme for SMEs and bringing them closer to the reality of the single market as well as adjusting them to the destination-based taxation.
 The SME package proposal was subject to a two-year discussion in the Council. Eventually, it was adopted on 18 February 2020 and will apply from 1 January 2025.
 The article explains the context of the review – the problems that it tackles, the objectives of the SME simplification package, the solutions proposed by the Commission and their final shape resulting from the Council discussions.

An Approach for Data Rate Maximization and Interference Mitigation in Massive MIMO Communication Systems Using SRPWGC-PD Algorithm

Increasing usage of wireless communication systems and demand for higher data speed is appealing newer generations of cellular communication systems to provide higher data rate along with a reliable system, i.e. system which is free from interference. 5G Communication systems are believed to provide at least ten times betterment in area throughput, i.e. data rate by increasing the spectral efficiency. Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is a key 5G technology that uses massive antenna arrays to provide a very high beamforming gain and spatial multiplexing of users and hence increases the spectral and energy efficiency. However, although Massive MIMO suppresses intra-cell interference and uncorrelated noise to a significant amount, it cannot mitigate the Pilot Contamination (PC) which is caused by reusing the same set of pilot signals in adjacent cells. In this paper, a new Pilot Decontamination (PD) technique, named as Softly Reused Pilot Weighted Graph Coloring-based Pilot Decontamination (SRPWGC-PD) has been introduced. In the proposed scheme, a scheme named soft pilot reusing is applied to separate the users in cells into two (inner and outer) zones, and then outer-zone users are allocated with orthogonal pilots; whereas a special pilot allocation scheme named weighted graph coloring algorithm is applied to the inner zone users to make generated PC as less as possible. Simulation and numerical analysis provide an insight that the proposed scheme outperforms in most of the performance indices, when compared to the existing schemes reported in the literature.

Increasing effectiveness of urban rooftop farming through reflector-assisted double-layer hydroponic production

While the expansion of population and urbanization has been placing additional demands on food production, it has also been reducing the amount of arable land and increasing the costs of food transport. Urban farming using space that does not compete for other urban uses has been proposed as a possible solution to alleviate this problem. In many cities, rooftops can be suitable for farming, especially for leafy vegetables that are not as easily transported from distant locations. Our previous study using a single layer hydroponics set-up within a 150 m2 rooftop screen house in Guangzhou, China, showed that safe and nutritious leafy vegetables can be profitably grown. However, the profit margin could only reach up to 53 % of the average 2015 Guangzhou income and recovery of set-up cost would take 2.5–3.5 years. To increase profit margin, this study tested using a low-cost reflector-assisted two-layer hydroponic system. Based on the production tests of 10 leafy vegetables, and depending on the type of vegetables, light reflectors were found to increase yield of the sun-shaded bottom tank to 31–76 % of the level achieved by the top tank. A special planting scheme that takes into consideration of consumer preference was deduced to be able to produce 6310 kg vegetables from the 150 m2 rooftop screen house, and depending on the cost of rent, this would translate to 84–62% of the 2018 Guangzhou average income, with recovery of set up costs reduced to 0.9–1.7 years. Moreover, if ∼86 % of Guangzhou’s rooftop space is used, this planting scheme has the capacity to provide 0.3 kg of vegetables per day to satisfy the vegetable needs of the city’s 14 million inhabitants. These findings may help incentivize investments in urban rooftop farming.

An integral equation method for closely interacting surfactant‐covered droplets in wall‐confined Stokes flow

SummaryA highly accurate method for simulating surfactant‐covered droplets in two‐dimensional Stokes flow with solid boundaries is presented. The method handles both periodic channel flows of arbitrary shape and stationary solid constrictions. A boundary integral method together with a special quadrature scheme is applied to solve the Stokes equations to high accuracy, also for closely interacting droplets. The problem is considered in a periodic setting and Ewald decompositions for the Stokeslet and stresslet are derived. Computations are accelerated using the spectral Ewald method. The time evolution is handled with a fourth‐order, adaptive, implicit‐explicit time‐stepping scheme. The numerical method is tested through several convergence studies and other challenging examples and is shown to handle drops in close proximity both to other drops and solid objects to high accuracy.

The EU Special Scheme for Travel Agents: Complex Present but Desired Future – Options for Reform

In this article, the authors endeavour to present a critical review of the special EU VAT rules for travel services, the so-called Tour Operators Margin Scheme, in its legal business and economic context, from its origins to its present application throughout the European Union. The authors seek to identify the main problematic issues, to underline the need for urgent reform and to reflect on possible ways forward.

A Tropospheric Tomography Method with a Novel Height Factor Model Including Two Parts: Isotropic and Anisotropic Height Factors

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) tomography has developed into an efficient tool for sensing the high spatiotemporal variability of atmospheric water vapor. The integration of GNSS top signals and side rays for tropospheric tomography systems using a novel height factor model (HFM) is proposed and discussed in this paper. Within the HFM, the sectional slant wet delay (SWD) of inside signals (the part of the side signal inside the tomography area), which is considered a key factor for modeling side rays, is separated into isotropic and anisotropic components. Correspondingly, two height factors are defined to calculate the isotropic and anisotropic part of tropospheric delays in the HFM. In addition, the dynamic tomography top boundary is first analyzed and determined based on 30-year radiosonde data to reasonably divide signals into top and side rays. Four special experimental schemes based on different tomography regions of Hong Kong are performed to assess the proposed HFM method, the results of which show increases of 33.42% in the mean utilization of rays, as well as decreases of 0.46 g/m3 in the average root mean square error (RMSE), compared to the traditional approach, revealing the improvement of tomography solutions when the side signals are included in the modeling. Furthermore, compared with the existing correction model for modeling side rays, the water vapor profiles retrieved from the proposed improved model are closer to the radiosonde data, which highlights the advantages of the proposed HFM for optimizing the GNSS tomography model.

Neural Architecture Search for a Highly Efficient Network with Random Skip Connections

Regarding the sequence learning of neural networks, there exists a problem of how to capture long-term dependencies and alleviate the gradient vanishing phenomenon. To manage this problem, we proposed a neural network with random connections via a scheme of a neural architecture search. First, a dense network was designed and trained to construct a search space, and then another network was generated by random sampling in the space, whose skip connections could transmit information directly over multiple periods and capture long-term dependencies more efficiently. Moreover, we devised a novel cell structure that required less memory and computational power than the structures of long short-term memories (LSTMs), and finally, we performed a special initialization scheme on the cell parameters, which could permit unhindered gradient propagation on the time axis at the beginning of training. In the experiments, we evaluated four sequential tasks: adding, copying, frequency discrimination, and image classification; we also adopted several state-of-the-art methods for comparison. The experimental results demonstrated that our proposed model achieved the best performance.

Throughput and energy efficiency maximization for UAV-assisted vehicular networks

Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) networks have a wide application prospect for providing vehicles with reliable road safety and infotainment services. This paper studies an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted vehicular network, in which a UAV with cache is dispatched to communicate with moving vehicles and base stations. We study the throughput maximization problem by optimizing the power distribution and trajectory planning of the UAV subject to practical mobility constraints and the information-causality constraint. To solve the non-convex problem, we break it into two sub-problems and propose an iterative algorithm that jointly applying slack variables and sequential optimization. Due to the limited on-board energy of UAVs, improving the energy efficiency (EE) of the UAV is of great significance. To this end, we propose an efficient algorithm by merging fractional programming and sequential optimization. Moreover, we set two special schemes as benchmarks to measure the performance of the proposed algorithms. Numerical results show that the application of cache and the proposed algorithms notably enhance the throughput and EE of the UAV-assisted V2I network.