Transparent Scheme Research Articles

Environmentally Differentiated Port Dues: A Case Study for a Transparent Scheme

Environmentally Differentiated Port Dues: A Case Study for a Transparent Scheme

Attosecond metrology in circular polarization

Attosecond metrology with linearly polarized light pulses is the basis of a highly successful research area. An even broader impact can be expected from a generalized metrology that covers two-dimensional polarization states, enabling notably the study of chiroptical phenomena on the electronic time scale. Here, we introduce and demonstrate a comprehensive approach to the generation and complete characterization of elliptically to circularly polarized attosecond pulses. The generation relies on a plug-in device of unprecedented simplicity. For the characterization, we introduce Stokes-parameter and attosecond-resolved reconstruction of optical waveforms (SPARROW), which encodes the attosecond-metrology information into the photoemission angle in the polarization plane and accesses all four Stokes parameters of the attosecond pulses. Our study demonstrates a physically transparent scheme for attosecond metrology with elliptical to fully circular polarizations, applicable to both table-top and accelerator-based light sources, which will unlock studies of chiral molecules, magnetic materials, and novel chiroptical phenomena on the most fundamental time scales.

Disorder-induced anomalous Hall effect in type-I Weyl metals: Connection between the Kubo-Streda formula in the spin and chiral basis

We study the anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in tilted Weyl metals with weak Gaussian disorder under the Kubo-Streda formalism in this work. To separate the three different contributions, namely the intrinsic, side jump and skew scattering contribution, it is usually considered necessary to go to the eigenstate (chiral) basis of the Kubo-Streda formula. However, it is more straight-forward to compute the total Hall current in the spin basis. For the reason, we develop a systematic and transparent scheme to separate the three different contributions in the spin basis for relativistic systems by building a one-to-one correspondence between the Feynman diagrams of the different mechanisms in the chiral basis and the products of the symmetric and anti-symmetric part of the polarization operator in the spin basis. We obtain the three contributions of the AHE in tilted Weyl metals by this scheme and found that the side jump contribution exceeds both the intrinsic and skew scattering contribution for the low-energy effective Hamiltonian. We compared the anomalous Hall current obtained from our scheme with the results from the semi-classical Boltzmann equation approach under the relaxation time approximation and found that the results from the two approaches agree with each other in the leading order of the tilting velocity.

Value assessment of medicinal products by the Italian Medicines Agency (AIFA) and French National Authority for Health (HAS): Similarities and discrepancies.

The evaluation of pharmaceutical innovation and therapeutic value is an increasingly complex exercise for which different approaches are adopted at the national level, despite the need for standardisation of processes and harmonisation of public health decisions. The objective of our analysis was to compare the approaches of the AIFA (Agenzia Italiana del Farmaco) and the HAS (Haute Autorité de Santé) in assessing the same medicinal products. In Italy, the 1525/2017 AIFA Deliberation introduces a transparent scheme for the evaluation of innovative status (innovative, conditional, not innovative) based on the therapeutic added value (TAV), therapeutic need, and quality of evidence. In contrast, in France, the HAS makes judgements using the effective clinical benefit (Service Médical Rendu) and improvement of effective clinical benefit (Amélioration du Service Médical Rendu, ASMR). This analysis focused on medicinal products evaluated both by the AIFA and by the HAS from July 2017 to September 2021. Similarities between AIFA and HAS evaluations were investigated in terms of the TAV, recognition of innovativeness, and the ASMR. Both total and partial agreements were considered relevant. Therefore, raw agreement, Cohen's kappa (weighted and unweighted), and Bangdiwala's B-statistic were estimated. A total of 102 medicinal products were included in this study. Out of these, 38 (37.2%) were orphan drugs, while 56 (54.9%) had a clinical indication for the treatment of cancer. The AIFA and HAS reached a higher level of agreement on the innovativeness status compared with the TAV. A moderate total agreement emerged in the recognition of innovativeness (k = 0.463, p-value ≤0.0001), and partial agreement was substantial (equal weight k = 0.547, squared k = 0.638), while a lack of agreement resulted in a comparison of the TAV according to the AIFA and the ASMR recognised by the HAS. Indeed, whereas the AIFA determined the TAV to be important, the HAS considered it to be moderate. In addition, whereas the AIFA identified a bias towards a moderate TAV, the HAS identified a bias towards a minor ASMR. A higher level of agreement was reached, both on the TAV and on innovative status, for less critical medical products (non-cancer-related, or non-orphan, or with a standard European Medicines Agency approval). These results underline the importance of implementing European procedures that are more broadly aligned in terms of value definition criteria.

Concept and method of evidence-based toxicology of traditional Chinese medicine from origin and development of evidence-based toxicology

Advances in science and technology promote the rapid development of toxicological detection technologies. However, there is still a lack of decision-making tools for toxicological risk assessment, such as the lack of transparent schemes to evaluate current toxicological research and practice and the lag of toxicological testing tools to evaluate toxicity, resulting in difficulties in toxicity verification and hindering the transformation of toxicological research paradigm. Some scholars have proposed to integrate the concept of evidence-based medicine with the toxicological practice to improve the technical methods of toxicological research concept and risk assessment decision-making. With the promotion of relevant scholars and academic organizations, the concept and connotation of evidence-based toxicology have gradually become clear and a framework for research and practice has been initially formed. Although there are still many challenges, it also provides a new idea for the toxicity risk assessment and safe medication decision-making of traditional Chinese medicine(TCM). The era of digital intelligence has brought new opportunities and broad space for the development of TCM evidence-based toxicology. The exploration of TCM evidence-based toxicology from concept to method is an important embodiment of the development of TCM evidence-based toxicology, and will also promote the continuous enrichment and improvement of the research and practice system of TCM evidence-based toxicology.

Blockchain-Based Gas Auctioning Coupled with a Novel Economic Dispatch Formulation for Gas-Deficient Thermal Plants

Inadequate gas supply is partly responsible for the energy shortfall experienced in some energy-poor nations. Favorable market conditions would boost investment in the gas supply sector; hence, we propose a blockchain-based fair, transparent, and secure gas trading scheme that facilitates peer-to-peer trading of gas. The scheme is developed using an Ethereum-based smart contract that receives offers from gas suppliers and bid(s) from the thermal plant operator. Giving priority to the cheapest offers, the smart contract determines the winning suppliers. This paper also proposes an economic dispatch model for gas-deficient plants. Conventional economic dispatch seeks to satisfy electric load demand whilst minimizing the total gas cost of generating units. Implicit in its formulation is the assumption that gas supply to generating units is sufficient to satisfy available demand. In energy poor nations, this is hardly the case as there is often inadequate gas supply and conventional economic dispatch is of little practical value. The proposed economic dispatch model’s objective function maximizes the quantity of available gas and determines the optimal power output of each generating unit. The mathematical formulation is verified using data from the Egbin thermal station which is the largest thermal station in Nigeria and is solved using the General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS). Obtained results indicate the viability of the novel approach as it results in a net power gain of 35 MW. On the other hand, the smart contract proved effective in accurately selecting winning suppliers and making payment.

Mediterranean, vegetarian and vegan diets as practical outtakes of EAS and ACC/AHA recommendations for lowering lipid profile.

Reduction of total cholesterol (TC) and LDL fraction (LDL-C) may be beneficial towards decreasing the risk of development of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). First and foremost, before implementing orsimultaneously with pharmacological treatment, patients should be informed about lifestyle changes that may be critical to achieving a better lipid profile. Recommendations from ACC/AHA (American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association) and EAS (European Atherosclerosis Society) mainly focus on limitation of saturated fatty acids (SFA) and trans fatty acids (TFA) consumption, but additional support could be considered. This review presents selected guidelines of European scientific societies concerning lipid metabolism disorders. The main aim of this manuscript was to present the guidelines how to provide simple and transparent schemes of management in dyslipidemia therapy. Encouraging patients for increasing the intake of soluble fiber (SF) and phytosterols (PS) may also be promoted for achieving therapeutic goals. In the clinical point of view, restoring an appropriate lipid profile is important because it directly reduces the risk of developing atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD). The EAS and ACC/AHA guidelines introduce several new demands, so far absent from previous recommendations. Mediterranean diet (MD) or vegetarian lifestyles are an example of diet patterns that are deliberated as healthy for cardio-vascular system, since both consist of fresh, unprocessed vegetables and fruits with addition of desirable fats.

WOMEN REPRESENTATION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH PANCHAYATI RAJ SYSTEM IN INDIA- EMERGING TRENDS AND CHALLENGES

In our country, it has been an ancient and rich tradition of democratic decentralization through Panchayati institutions. Today, the independent India has completed 25 years on the path of democratic decentralization through the Panchayat Raj Act. During this period, more than 20 states have increased the number of seats reserved for women from 33% to 50%. In terms of number of women representatives -Jharkhand is on top in states like Rajasthan, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh, while Mizoram is at the bottom in this list. During the period of these 25 years, some new trends have emerged in Panchayati institutions like-Conversion of elite politics into mass politics, decline the concept of sarpanch pati, three-tier pressure on women in a three-tier Panchayati system, conflict status regarding the exercise of political rights, increase in percentage of women representatives and their political awareness, different role and different work culture of women representatives in urban and rural areas, efforts for economic self-reliance through self-help groups etc. .In this era of information revolution in 21st century,these women leaders will have to be technically equipped for the practical implementation of transparent schemes like e-governance and m-governance.Today,panchayati institutions are being entrusted with the important responsibility of connecting people through various schemes related to rural India like “Make in India” and “Digital India”. In such a situation, the success of the scheme like Digital Literacy Mission, Ayushyaman Bharat Yojana, Jal shakti Abhiyan, single use plastic ban and e-market plus depend to some extent on the working capacity of these representatives occupying more than half of the Panchayati posts. We can hope that maximum governance and minimum government based our Panchayati system will create immense possibilities in the female leadership, which will change the picture of rural India in the near future, it will also change destiny. KEYWORDS- Panchayati Raj, Rural Development, Decentralization, Political Awareness, Information Technology, E-Panchayat, E-Governance,Women's Reservation.

Chapter 21 - Real-time fMRI for brain-computer interfacing

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) based on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) provide an important complement to other noninvasive BCIs. While fMRI has several disadvantages (being nonportable, methodologically challenging, costly, and noisy), it is the only method providing high spatial resolution whole-brain coverage of brain activation. These properties allow relating mental activities to specific brain regions and networks providing a transparent scheme for BCI users to encode information and for real-time fMRI BCI systems to decode the intents of the user. Various mental activities have been used successfully in fMRI BCIs so far that can be classified into the four categories: (a) higher-order cognitive tasks (e.g., mental calculation), (b) covert language-related tasks (e.g., mental speech and mental singing), (c) imagery tasks (motor, visual, auditory, tactile, and emotion imagery), and (d) selective attention tasks (visual, auditory, and tactile attention). While the ultimate spatial and temporal resolution of fMRI BCIs is limited by the physiologic properties of the hemodynamic response, technical and analytical advances will likely lead to substantially improved fMRI BCIs in the future using, for example, decoding of imagined letter shapes at 7T as the basis for more "natural" communication BCIs.

ПРАКТИЧНЕ ВПРОВАДЖЕННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНИХ СИСТЕМ НА ОСНОВІ ОЦІНЮВАННЯ ЗОВНІШНІХ ВПЛИВІВ

The article highlighted the advantage of information systems in front of centralized systems in terms of ensuring the security of network infrastructure, data transmitted, and procedures used in the software environment of the complex. It was pointed out the technical simplicity of the methods of expansion of information systems and, accordingly, their scalability. A multilevel energy balance scheme and computing resources of the information system infrastructure, based on the optimization of the task graph, have been developed. The methods of estimating the optimization of the graph of tasks, which are based on the indicators of the normalized graph normalized distribution of energy, are determined. The results of mathematical modeling in comparison with statistical data for such methods of working with task graphs as calculations by hierarchical structure, graph split algorithms, methods based on algebraic theory of graphs, structuring of "Diamond Dags" type. The analysis was conducted for such types of distribution as uniform distribution, binomial distribution, geometric distribution. The results of the comparison point to a sufficiently upstart prediction accuracy at the level of mathematical modeling. In most cases, the value of the maximum deviation, presented as a relative error, between simulation results and statistical data remains within 10%, which shows the adequacy of the simulation. Nevertheless, for the four pairs of functions of the length of the normalized graph and the normalized energy distribution, the maximum deviation is greater than 10%, indicating the need for a revision of the model and further statistical studies. It is proposed to use in organizing the protection of resources of the information system of clusterization methods, which allow to construct a transparent scheme of functioning of the complex and to construct monitoring algorithms.

Partnership of Digital Libraries Hathi Trust Digital Library: the New Mode of Cooperation

There is analysed the activities of digital libraries partnership Hathi Trust Digital Library (HTDL), arose in October 2008 in the United States as a collaborative repository of digital collections of library systems of 13 universities in the U.S. Middle West and digital collections of 11 universities in California (now numbering 124 libraries). In the United States — the leader of IT-technologies — has been accumulated the vast experience in the field of organization of electronic resources, carried out a large-scale reorganization of library industry, the results of which are not sufficiently covered in the domestic library science. For the first time, the Russian library community is invited to learn the specific experience of the formation and operation of the partnership of digital libraries HTDL, based on the principle of institutional cooperation and coordination of management solutions in the conservation and maintenance of electronic collections.The main tasks of the distributed data warehouse belonging to the partnership group of large research libraries are: providing access to the digital collection first of all for collective users, libraries — co-founders; preservation of intellectual heritage through reliable and accessible electronic representation, improvement of open technological infrastructure. The HTML concept is based on the conscious preservation of the specificity of research libraries, when the user is offered a body of special catalogued literature, and the ranking of search results is not influenced by the commercial interests. It is noted that HTDL is built on the basis of an extensive network of interlibrary entities in the United States with extensive cooperation in the field of administration, cataloguing, and storage of printed materials.There are considered the priority achievements of Hathi Trust Digital Library: development of the new models of interlibrary cooperation, efficient distributed management structure, transparent scheme of payment calculation of infrastructure maintenance. The dynamics of the development of this resource from the moment of formation to the present time is analysed.

VFlash: Virtualized Flash for Optimizing the I/O Performance in Mobile Devices

I/O is becoming one of major performance bottlenecks in NAND-flash-based mobile devices. Novel nonvolatile memories (NVMs), such as phase change memory and spin-transfer torque random access memory, can provide fast read/write operations. In this paper, we propose a unified NVM/flash architecture to improve the I/O performance. A transparent scheme, virtualized flash (vFlash), is also proposed to manage the unified architecture. Within vFlash, interapp and intra-app techniques are proposed to optimize the application performance by exploiting the historical locality and I/O access patterns of applications. Since vFlash is on the bottom of the I/O stack, the application features will be lost. Therefore, we also propose a cross-layer technique to transfer the application information from the application layer to the vFlash layer. The proposed scheme is evaluated based on an Android platform, and the experimental results show that the proposed scheme can effectively improve the I/O performance of mobile devices.

A Novel Efficient Address Mutation Scheme for IPv6 Networks

IP mutation is an effective moving target defense method against sniffer or hijacking attack. The mutation frequency is one of the most important parameters that influence the security of mutation method. However, higher frequency is inconsistent with data transmission that will decrease the efficiency and stability. Moreover, most of existing mutation methods have shortcomings under various conditions, such as address allocation or network architecture. In this paper, sliding window and full transparent (SWIFT) scheme for IPv6 address mutation is proposed. With the sliding window design, the SWIFT scheme can provide an address mutation with very high frequency. This scheme is transparent to both network side and user side so that the existing equipment and architecture need not to be changed. A prototype by the SWIFT scheme is designed and developed over an IPv6 network. The experiment result shows that our method can achieve high transmission efficiency with a high mutation frequency, which provides a good experience for most mutation methods.

Controlling instability and phase hops of a kicked two-level ion in Lamb-Dicke regime

Nonlinearity and singularity lead to lack of quantum exact solution of a kicked rotor. We here study quantum motion of a laser-kicked two-level ion in the Lamb-Dicke regime and obtain a set of exact solutions of the generalized coherent states. A new stability region of parameter space where classical stability criterion fully agrees with fidelity treatment of quantum ground-state stability is found, which unusually contains the resonance frequency for a weak kick and the larger kick strength for a far-off-resonance frequency. When the field parameters in the stability region are applied, the ion’s wave-packet trains continuously oscillate in the Lamb-Dicke regime, while for the parameters in the instability region, they collapse and spread to far away from the Lamb-Dicke regime, resulting in the crossover from linearity to nonlinearity. Meanwhile the laser kicks bring hopping phases of the exact solutions, and lead to stable or unstable hops of the expected momentum and energy. The exact results provide a transparent scheme for using periodic kicks with wider parameter region to localize ions in the Lamb-Dicke regime and for suppressing the instability-induced decoherence in laser-ion interactions, which can be observed in the existing experimental setups and possess potential applications.

Bit rate transparent interferometric noise mitigation utilizing the nonlinear modulation curve of electro-absorption modulator.

we propose a bit-rate transparent interferometric noise mitigation scheme utilizing the nonlinear modulation curve of electro-absorption modulator (EAM). Both the zero-slope region and the linear modulation region of the nonlinear modulation curve are utilized to suppress interferometric noise and enlarge noise margin of degraded eye diagrams. Using amplitude suppression effect of the zero-slope region, interferometric noise at low frequency range is suppressed successfully. Under different signal to noise ratio (SNR), we measured the power penalties at bit error rate (BER) of 10<(-9) with and without EAM interferometric noise suppression. By using our proposed scheme, power penalty improvement of 8.5 dB is achieved in a signal with signal-to-noise ratio of 12.5 dB. BER results at various bit rates are analyzed, error floors for each BER curves are removed, significantly improvement in receiver sensitivity and widely opened eye diagrams are resulted.

Robust watermarking using four bit per pixel technique

In recent years, the internet has become an explosive growth for multimedia applications as well as eye catching and cost-effective medium. It is also used for sharing of information electronically than the classical medium. The rapid advancement of the technology, the internet has become easier and faster as well as accurate information shares by sender and receiver. As the information allotment globally may be accessible to the internet users, it is accountable to many threats like illegal copying, distribution, tampering, authentication, etc. Steganography, cryptography, watermarking are the different techniques to secure the electronic information. This paper represents a novel robust and transparent scheme of watermarking technique that exploits the human visual system HVS. An algorithm proposed here which is based on mapping of four bit per pixel FBPP technique and a suitable pixel selection method.

Achieving transparency in carbon labelling for construction materials – Lessons from current assessment standards and carbon labels

The construction industry is one of the largest sources of carbon emissions. Manufacturing of raw materials, such as cement, steel and aluminium, is energy intensive and has considerable impact on carbon emissions level. Due to the rising recognition of global climate change, the industry is under pressure to reduce carbon emissions. Carbon labelling schemes are therefore developed as meaningful yardsticks to measure and compare carbon emissions. Carbon labelling schemes can help switch consumer-purchasing habits to low-carbon alternatives. However, such switch is dependent on a transparent scheme. The principle of transparency is highlighted in all international greenhouse gas (GHG) standards, including the newly published ISO 14067: Carbon footprint of products – requirements and guidelines for quantification and communication. However, there are few studies which systematically investigate the transparency requirements in carbon labelling schemes. A comparison of five established carbon labelling schemes, namely the Singapore Green Labelling Scheme, the CarbonFree (the U.S.), the CO2 Measured Label and the Reducing CO2 Label (UK), the CarbonCounted (Canada), and the Hong Kong Carbon Labelling Scheme is therefore conducted to identify and investigate the transparency requirements. The results suggest that the design of current carbon labels have transparency issues relating but not limited to the use of a single sign to represent the comprehensiveness of the carbon footprint. These transparency issues are partially caused by the flexibility given to select system boundary in the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to measure GHG emissions. The primary contribution of this study to the construction industry is to reveal the transparency requirements from international GHG standards and carbon labels for construction products. The findings also offer five key strategies as practical implications for the global community to improve the performance of current carbon labelling schemes on transparency.

Use of state of polarization transparent scheme for polarization shift keying signal as optical phase conjugator to improve the transmission performance

Transmission characteristics of polarization shift keying (PolSK) signal is experimentally demonstrated in this work. Performance degradation due to transmission is improved using optical phase conjugation (OPC) technique. The wavelength converter based on the proposed state of polarization (SOP) transparent scheme for PolSK signal is effective to use it as mid-link optical phase conjugator and which is difficult to achieve using conventional wavelength conversion scheme. It is found that for fiber transmission, the performance of both of the orthogonal SOPs of the PolSK signal is different for their respective chirping characteristics which can be optimized to be similar using proposed OPC technique.

A Color Image Watermarking Algorithm

Transparency and robustness are two conflicting requirements demanded by digital image watermarking for copyright protection and many other purposes. In this paper, a robust and transparent watermarking scheme for color images is proposed. The color features for the human visual system are utilized to design the color watermarking algorithm. The basic idea is to embed the invisible watermark into the color image by brightness adjustment and feature component choice. And through analysis and constraint the conditions, we can obtain a high detection probability and security, a low false alarm probability. In the same time, because we use different matrix operation to embed (secret key) and extract (public key) a watermark, we are able to release all information for the public, except the secret key. Our method can extract the embedded watermark without reference image. The robustness of our method is demonstrated by various attacks through computer simulation.

The Structure of Galaxies I: Surface Photometry Techniques

AbstractThis project uses the 2MASS all-sky image database to study the structure of galaxies over a range of luminosities, sizes and morphological types. This first paper in this series will outline the techniques, reliability and data products to our surface photometry program. Our program will analyze all acceptable galaxies (meeting our criteria for isolation from companions and bright stars) from the Revised Shapley–Ames and Uppsala galaxy catalogs. Resulting photometry and surface brightness profiles are released using a transparent scheme of data storage which includes not only all the processed data but knowledge of the processing steps and calibrating parameters.