Structure Research Articles

STUDY OF STRUCTURE OF PREDICTIVE SKILLS OF FUTURE BUILDERS

Based on the questionnaire of future bachelor-builders, the structure of prognostic skills was revealed. The presence of professional-personal, special-professional and socio-professional components has been established.

On processing structure–conductivity relations in NASICON-type LiSn2(PO4)3

On processing structure–conductivity relations in NASICON-type LiSn2(PO4)3

Corporate Sustainability: Study of Factors that Affect Corporate Towards Organizational Sustainability in Today Fast-Changing World

Sustainability has always run through social and economic activities. As significant economies have competed for their interests in the past few years, this situation has caused a global economic depression. Additionally, this situation worsened due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. The international politics, economy, and Culture are undergoing unprecedented destruction and challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic that has caused businesses in many countries and regions to close or are about to face bankruptcy. More and more employees are getting laid off every day since the COVID-19 began. Even employees who are employed are feeling unsecured. So, in the face of uncertainties and difficulties facing corporations worldwide, we need to find a better way to extend the company's life cycle in a more structured and sustainable manner. 
 
 The main research question for this study is "What are the factors that have significant effects on organizational sustainability?" In this study, twelve independent variables including Leadership (L.S.), Management (M.N.), Culture (C.T.), Structure (S.T.), Workforce diversity (W.D.), Organizational age (O.A.), Staff age (S.A.), Mindset (M.S.), Technology (T.N.), Organizational dimension (O.D.), Group structure (G.S.), Business locations (B.L.) and one dependent variable called Sustainability (SUS) is the studied. This study aims to understand the structural relationships among these potential variables that could influence corporate sustainability. The dataset utilized to test the hypothesis postulated in this study using Structural Equation Models (SEM). This study suggested that the Leadership, Management, and Staffing Age significantly affects organizations towards organizational sustainability. Considering the different politics, economy, and cultural backgrounds in countries and industries, the study also found that some irreconcilable factors affect the performance of leadership, management, and staff ages. Thus, this study identified effective leadership, management, and staff age as strategies to lead organizations further towards organizational sustainability. The results of this study provide some valuable suggestions for all companies facing the COVID-19 threats right now to bring back to life and become more sustainable in the years to come and provide some evidence for future researchers to explore this field further.

Longevidade de dentes tratados endodonticamente e restaurados com pinos metálicos e de fibra de vidro: uma revisão integrativa da literatura

OBJETIVO: Revisar a literatura de forma integrativa sobre a longevidade clínica de dentes tratados endodonticamente e restaurados com pinos metálicos e de fibra de vidro e com coroas fixas, a partir dos fatores sobrevivência e modo de falha. METODOLOGIA: Foi realizada busca nas bases de dados Lilacs e Pubmed, com os seguintes descritores: restauração dentária (dental restoration; restauración dental), pinos dentários (dental pins; pins dentales), estudo clínico (clinical study; estudio clínico). Os critérios de inclusão foram: artigos que abordaram as variáveis de longevidade clínica, taxa de sobrevivência e modo de falha de pinos metálicos e de fibra de vidro, nos idiomas português, inglês e espanhol, publicados entre 2010 a 2020, do tipo ensaios clínicos com ou sem randomização e revisões sistemáticas com ou sem metanálise. E, os critérios de exclusão foram: revisões narrativas de literatura, casos clínicos, estudos in vitro, in silico, cartas ao editor e artigos de opinião. RESULTADOS: Combinando-se os métodos de busca, foram identificados 06 artigos, sendo destes 04 artigos ensaios clínicos randomizados e 02 artigos revisões sistemáticas. Os estudos incluídos mostram elevado nível de evidência científica. CONSIDERAÇÕES FINAIS:A presente revisão integrativa da literatura, quanto a uma longevidade clínica de dentes tratados endodonticamente e restaurados com pinos metálicos e de fibra de vidro, observados que os resultados clínicos ainda são conflituosos em relação aos fatores de suporte e modo de falha. E que, a estrutura coronária remanescente parece ser mais importante para o sucesso da reabilitação que o material do pino, contudo, como evidências de apoio são limitadas.

A Review on Progressive Collapse of Reinforced Concrete Flat Slab Structures

The reinforced concrete flat slab structures are highly susceptible to punching shear failure. This occurs due to the transferring of shear force and due to the bending moment between the slab and the column. The initial local failure and the following redistribution of load can lead to punching failure of the slab in the adjacent column locations. This issue can collapse an entire building or a huge portion of a structure. Hence, an alternate load path method is necessary for preventing the catastrophic failure of the buildings. Compared to the moment frame buildings, flat slab buildings are more prone to the progressive collapse. Thus, the designing of flat plate structures demands more attention and study. Due to higher construction costs and limitations in the test set up, the researchers have adopted scale down structures for the experimental studies. The progressive collapse behavior of the prototype structures is usually analyzed using both analytical and numerical simulations. This paper discusses the existing researchers on the analytical study, experimental study, and numerical simulations of flat slab structures along with various load resisting mechanisms to mitigate progressive collapse. Further, various strengthening techniques available in the literature for the flat slab structures have been discussed. A parametric study and comparison of different strengthening techniques are also performed in this work.

Convolutional neural network for semantic segmentation of fetal echocardiography based on four-chamber view

The acute shortage of trained and experienced sonographers causes the detection of congenital heart defects (CHDs) extremely difficult. In order to minimize this difficulty, an accurate fetal heart segmentation to the early location of such structural heart abnormalities prior to delivery is essential. However, the segmentation process is not an easy task due to the small size of the fetal heart structure. Moreover, the manual task for identifying the standard cardiac planes, primarily based on a four-chamber view, requires a well-trained clinician and experience. In this paper, a CNN method using U-Net architecture was proposed to automate fetal cardiac standard planes segmentation from ultrasound images. A total of 519 fetal cardiac images was obtained from three videos. All data is divided into training and testing data. The testing data consist of 106 slices of the four-chamber segmentation tasks, i.e. atrial septal defect (ASD), ventricular septal defect (VSD), and Normal. The segmentation of the post-processing method is needed to enhanced the segmentation result. In this paper, a combination technique with U-Net and Otsu thresholding gives the best performances with 99.48%-pixel accuracy, 96.73% mean accuracy, 94.92% mean intersection over union, and 0.21% segmentation error. In the future, the implementation of Deep Learning in the study of CHDs holds significant potential for identifying novel CHDs in heterogeneous fetal hearts.

A Study of 3D Printed Box Structure

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are commonly used for surveillance and aerial mapping. Balsa wood construction is common for small UAV. However, for larger UAV size, balsa construction can be too fragile. 3D printing based airframe can help in producing accurate profile contour needed in a wing design, particularly on Blended Wing Body (BWB) design. Nowadays, 3D printing machines are not expensive and easily available. Flight Technology and Test Centre (FTTC) RIG, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) has been developing and building small BWB UAV made of 3D printing. At the moment, the strength and stiffness of the wing box structure has not been properly investigated. The general target of this research is to understand the static mechanical behavior of a small wing box suitable for UAV manufactured by 3D printing. A simple wing box that can be produced on in-house 3D printer was produced. Standard tensile test was conducted to the PLA (Polylactic Acid) printed material. Finite element simulation of the wing box was performed, and static test experiment was conducted. Stresses and displacements were obtained and analyzed.

Investigation on the effect of metal foam properties on the PCM melting performance subjected to various heat fluxes

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of structural and mechanical characteristics of metal foam on the melting behavior of phase change materials under the influence of different heat fluxes. To this aim, a two dimensional numerical model considering the non-equilibrium thermal factor, non-Darcy effect and local natural convection was used. The governing equations of PCM and metal foam are discretized using a finite volume method with a collocated grid arrangement. To simulate the melting of PCM, the enthalpy-porosity method is applied which computes the liquid fraction at each iteration, based on the enthalpy balance. The effect of metal foam characteristics (porosity, pores size and base material) and wall heat flux on the PCM melting time were investigated. The result showed that for both wall heat fluxes (4000 W m-2 and 8000 W m-2), foam structure and its mechanical properties have significant influence on the PCM melting time which these effects should be considered.

Bridge Failure Prevention: An Overview of Self-Protected Pier as Flow Altering Countermeasures for Scour Protection

The inherent scour process around the bridge piers needs to be considered and crucial to ensure a sustainable and economical bridge design. The performance of any scour protection/controlling devices around bridge piers is determined on how each device counters or minimize the scouring process. Besides the usually adopted bed armouring, abundant studies have been conducted to evaluate the efficiency of flow-altering countermeasures in reducing local scour depth. The flow changes due to the rigid pier are modified in a way to reduce the impinging effect on the bed. This paper discusses on the performance and feasibility of self-protected piers, defined as a pier without any additional structure built either next to or at a distance away from the pier. We paid attention to the efficiency of the proposed countermeasures in terms of possible maximum scour reduction and provide the best configuration of each self-protection pier. This review consists of analysis on the openings on pier including internal tubing, slot and pier groups, and modified pier shapes as the flow-altering, self-protected countermeasure alternatives.

RNA methylation and neurovascular unit remodeling.

RNA methylation is of great significance in the regulation of gene expression, among which the more important methylation modifiers are N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and 5-methylcytosine (m5C). The methylation process is mainly regulated by 3 kinds of proteins: methyltransferase, demethylase, and reader. m6A, m5C, and their related proteins have high abundance in the brain, and they have important roles in the development of the nervous system and the repair and remodeling of the vascular system. The neurovascular unit (NVU) is a unit of brain structure and function composed of neurons, capillaries, astrocytes, supporting cells, and extracellular matrix. The local microenvironment for NVU has an important role in nerve cell function repair, and the remodeling of NVU is of great significance in the prognosis of various neurological diseases.

A Zr-Substituted Polyoxotungstate Built by [β-GeW10O38]12− and [A-α-PW9O34]9− Fragments: Synthesis, Structure and Properties

A Zr-Substituted Polyoxotungstate Built by [β-GeW10O38]12− and [A-α-PW9O34]9− Fragments: Synthesis, Structure and Properties

On Megalepthyphantes lydiae Wunderlich, 1994 (Araneae: Linyphiidae)

Megalepthyphantes lydiaeWunderlich, 1994 is redescribed and illustrated on the basis of new material from Greece. Judging from the structure of the palp, this species is similar to the north-African M. auresensisBosmans, 2006 and M. bkheitae (Bosmans & Bouragba, 1992). In the peculiar shape of its embolus M. lydiae resembles the Irano-Caucasian M. camelus (Tanasevitch, 1990). From these species M. lydiae is clearly distinguished by structural details of the genitalia in both sexes.

Influence of ambipolar and Hall effects on vorticity in three-dimensional simulations of magneto-convection: Vorticity with ambipolar and Hall effect

This paper presents the results of the analysis of three-dimensional simulations of solar magneto-convection that include the joint action of the ambipolar diffusion and the Hall effect. Three simulation runs are compared: One including both ambipolar diffusion and the Hall effect; one including only ambipolar diffusion and one without any of these two effects. The magnetic field is amplified from initial field to saturation level by the action of turbulent local dynamo. In each of these cases, we study 2 h of simulated solar time after the local dynamo reaches the saturation regime. We analyse the power spectra of vorticity, of magnetic field fluctuations and of the different components of the magnetic Poynting flux responsible for the transport of vertical or horizontal perturbations. Our preliminary results show that the ambipolar diffusion produces a strong reduction of vorticity in the upper chromospheric layers and that it dissipates the vortical perturbations converting them into thermal energy. The Hall effect acts in the opposite way, strongly enhancing the vorticity. When the Hall effect is included, the magnetic field in the simulations becomes, on average, more vertical and long-lived flux tube-like structures are produced. We trace a single magnetic structure to study its evolution pattern and the magnetic field intensification, and their possible relation to the Hall effect. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue 'High-resolution wave dynamics in the lower solar atmosphere'.

Andiriposi’ and its Function in Traditional Houses at Pitu Ulunna Salu, Mamasa Regency, Indonesia

The location of this research is in the Pitu Ulunna Salu (PUS) region, Mamasa Regency, Indonesia. The aim is to examine and report on the function of the Andiriposi’ in traditional houses in the Pitu Ulunna Salu area in the past. The methodology involved carrying out a qualitative study by exploring all research areas. Data was collected by observation and in-depth interviews with the local elders who still have knowledge of the function of the Andiriposi' in traditional houses in the past. Data analysis involved qualitative analysis, which included data collection, data presentation, data reduction and drawing conclusions. The results showed that the function of the Andiriposi’ in traditional houses in the Pitu Ulunna Salu area was: 1) Structural: as the main pillar in the middle of the house and as the central point of the lower structure and the floor of the building; 2) Adats (customs): as a starting point for the construction of houses and as a seat for the traditional leader during the implementation of adat meetings; and 3) Practical function: as a mortar where rice is pounded in the house, and as a place to slaughter pigs, when there is a traditional ritual performed inside the traditional house.

Correction to: The structure of group preserving operators

Correction to: The structure of group preserving operators

Progress on biosynthesis and function of the natural products of Zi Cao as a traditional Chinese medicinal herb.

Zi Cao is an important traditional medicinal plant resource in China. Shikonin and its derivatives, as the purple-red naphthoquinones among natural products of its roots, are commonly used clinically in the treatment of sores and skin inflammations. Over the past few decades, due to their highly effective multiple biological activities, pharmacological effects, good clinical efficacy and high utilization value, shikonin and its derivatives have attracted increasing attention of domestic and foreign researchers. For this reason, the wild plant germplasm resources have been suffering a grievous exploitation, leading to a serious threat to the habitat. With the development of the biosynthesis, molecular metabolism and biotechnology, as well as the continuous innovation of research methods on the biological activities and pharmacological effects of plant natural products, significant progress has been made in the research on the biosynthetic pathways and related regulatory genes of shikonin. The pharmacological action and its mechanism of shikonin have also been deeply elucidated, which greatly promoted the basic research and clinical application development of shikonin. In this review, we briefly introduce and analyze the classification of Zi Cao, structure and composition of natural shikonin and its biosynthesis pathway, functional genes related to the regulation of shikonin biosynthesis, and biological activities and pharmacological functions of shikonin. Finally, we address possible prospective for the trend on the future research and development of natural shikonin and its derivatives, hoping to provide a useful reference for the deep mining and development of medicinal natural products from important Chinese medicinal materials, and to promote the modern development of traditional Chinese medicine.

Another new species of Oedothorax Bertkau, 1883 from India (Araneae, Linyphiidae)

A new species, Oedothorax khasi sp. nov., is described from the Indian state of Meghalaya on the basis of a single male. The species is similar to the Oriental O. myanmarTanasevitch, 2017, different in some details of palpal structure.

Decoding brain encoded by genome.

Human brain is the most complicated living organ in nature. How the human genome encodes the structure and function of brain is a fundamental question to understand the essence of mind. Currently, it is still an unsolved scientific problem requiring the further breakthrough of comprehensive technologies. Here, we summarize the recent advances in brain development/function OMICS studies, and discuss the huge challenges and prospects in understanding how brain is encoded by genome.

From Site Survey to HBIM Model for the Documentation of Historic Buildings: the Case Study of Hexinwu Village in China

Architectural heritage surveying plays a fundamental role in the preservation of historic buildings for scientific research, education and tourism. The use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Terrestrial Laser Scanning techniques are essential for architectural heritage surveying and mapping. In recent years, the combination of Building Information Modelling (BIM) with heritage studies has been presented as Historic BIM (HBIM) which, integrated with UVA and TLS, is a technique that is able to deal more efficiently with the management and protection of historic buildings. This paper focuses on the integration of UVA images and point clouds from laser scanning to build a 3D architectural model for the documentation of Chinese historic buildings. In particular, the method, tested in the case study of the traditional village, Hexinwu, China, can contribute further to the analysis, evaluation and heritage planning of this remarkable architectural structure, thus increasing its historical significance for the future.

The features of the hydration and structure formation process of modified low-clinker binders

The features of the hydration and structure formation process of modified low-clinker binders