Effect of impeller types on saponification reaction using stirred tank reactor

The choice of impeller type is an important factor in maximizing the performance of a stirred tank reactor in saponification process. This study aims to determine the type of impeller that can produce the highest reaction rate by taking into account changes in alkali concentration in saponification reactions so as to obtain a shorter residence time. The saponification process was carried out by reacting 30% oil with alkali (KOH) at operating conditions 70C, stirring speed of 400 rpm for 45 minutes using 4 types of impellers namely paddle-2 blades, pitch blade turbine 45°-2 blades, paddle-4 blades, pitch blade turbine 45°-4 blades. Testing of alkali concentration was carried out every 5 minutes until the reaction was complete. Alkali concentration was obtained at the end of the reaction using a paddle-2 blades impeller of 0.182 M with a conversion of 97.35%, a pitch blade turbine 45°-2 blades of 0.142 M with a conversion of 97.93%, paddle-2 blades of 0.106 M with conversion of 98.46%, pitch blade turbine 45°-4 blades of 0.100 M with conversion of 98.54%

Business Analytics components for public healthinstitution - Clinical decision area

The practice of evidence-based medicine has been gaining ground in the most diverse health institutions and consequently in the work of their health professionals. Thus, the Clinical Decision Support Systems appear, which aim to ensure that health professionals are supported with the best evidence in order to improve the clinical decision-making process, reducing the occurrence of adverse events through the availability and sharing of quality information by health professionals. Business Intelligence (BI) and Business Analytics (BA) technologies are increasingly being used to extract knowledge and turn it into useful information and analytical tools for healthcare professionals. This article is part of a dissertation that has as main objective the extraction of knowledge from the hospital data of the obstetrics service in Centro Materno-Infantil do Norte (CMIN) from Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Porto (CHUP) with focus on the area of clinical decision.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (UIDB/00319/2020

[TEACHING VOCAL SKILLS TO NON-ARABIC SPEAKING PRESCHOOL CHILDREN AND PRINCIPLES OF DEVELOPING APPROPRIATE LANGUAGE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS FOR THEM] تعليم المهارات الصوتية لأطفال ما قبل المدرسة الناطقين بغير العربية وأسس بناء البرامج التعليمية اللغوية المعدة

The field of teaching Arabic to speakers of other languages suffers from insufficient educational curricula and research that address the problems and difficulties facing those learners. Therefore, the study aimed to identify the characteristics and problems of the pre-school stage in teaching Arabic as a foreign language, as well as the most important vocal skills and the principles of developing language educational programs for preschool learners. The study used the descriptive analytical approach in the collection and discussion of data, through reviewing some previous studies. Some of the findings the study reached, included: The pre-school stage is one of the most essential stages in acquiring a foreign language, therefore, teaching vocal skills to children at this stage is a vital step due to the distinctive characteristics such learners possess. The study provided a list of vocal skills appropriate for children at this stage, and a set of principles and criteria that have to be met to ensure the success of the language educational programs developed. The study recommended the development of programs and textbooks for teaching Arabic to non-Arabic speaking children based on their needs and in light of international standards. يعاني مجال تعليم اللغة العربية للأطفال الناطقين بغيرها من قلة المناهج التعليمية، وقلة البحوث التي تتناولالمشكلات والصعوبات التي تواجههم؛ ولذلك هدفت الدراسة إلى التعرف على خصائص ومشكلات مرحلةما قبل المدرسة في تعليم اللغة العربية لغة أجنبية، وتحديد أهم المهارات الصوتية وأسس بناء البرامج التعليميةاللغوية المناسبة لهم؛ ولتحقيق هذه الأهداف اعتمدت الدراسة المنهج الوصفي التحليلي في جمع البياناتومناقشتها، من خلال عرض بعض الدراسات السابقة، وتم التوصل إلى بعض النتائج منها: أن مرحلة ما قبلالمدرسة من أهم المراحل في اكتساب اللغة الأجنبية، وتعليم المهارات الصوتية للأطفال في هذه المرحلة خطوةضرورية لما لهم من صفات مميزة، وقدمت الدراسة قائمة بالمهارات الصوتية المناسبة للأطفال في هذه المرحلة،واستنتجت مجموعة من الأسس والمعايير لبناء البرامج التعليمية اللغوية لابد من اتباعها لنجاح البرنامجالتعلمي، وأوصت الدراسة ببناء برامج وكتب تعليم العربية للأطفال الناطقين بغيرها في ضوء احتياجاتهم، وفيضوء المعايير العالمية

Data Warehouse and BI to catalize information use in health sector for decision making: a case study

Health sector in most countries including Zanzibar lacks the single repository that integrates health management data produced by multitude of sources. The study proves cost effective but successful implementation of Data Warehouse (DW) plays useful role to influence informed decision making in the health sector. Successful DW needs to include necessary features such as Online Analytic Process (OLAP) which gives decision makers the freedom to analyses information into different format business intelligence (BI) tools, data mining and data presentation tools. In this study, we attempted to identify DW needs to consider culture of organization and what organization actual wants for decision making. The study proposed the cost effective DW and BI tools solution to catalyze informed decision making in health care industry. The study also aims to discuss challenges and sets out recommendations

One Model Fits All: Cross-Region Taxi-Demand Forecasting

The growing demand for ride-hailing services has led to an increasing need for accurate taxi demand prediction. Existing systems are limited to specific regions, lacking generalizability to unseen areas. This paper presents a novel taxi demand forecasting system that leverages a graph neural network to capture spatial dependencies and patterns in urban environments. Additionally, the proposed system employs a region-neutral approach, enabling it to train a model that can be applied to any region, including unseen regions. To achieve this, the framework incorporates the power of Variational Autoencoder to disentangle the input features into region-specific and region-neutral components. The region-neutral features facilitate cross-region taxi demand predictions, allowing the model to generalize well across different urban areas. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system in accurately forecasting taxi demand, even in previously unobserved regions, thus showcasing its potential for optimizing taxi services and improving transportation efficiency on a broader scale.Comment: Accepted to The 31st ACM International Conference on Advances in Geographic Information Systems(SIGSPATIAL '23) as a short paper in the Research, Systems and Industrial Experience Papers trac

Distributed Battery Energy Storage Co-Operation for Renewable Energy Sources Integration

This paper presents a multiagent system (MAS) day-ahead co-operation framework between renewable energy resources (RESs) and Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESSs) owned by different stakeholders. BESSs offer their storage services to RESs by shifting RES power to sell it during profitable peak-hours (aka; time-shifting). The MAS framework consists of three phases. Phase-one is a pre-auction phase that defines the maximum charging and discharging BESS power limits. These limits guarantee a reliable distribution system operation without violating the buses’ voltage limits or the ampacity of the branches. Phase-two is an auctioning phase between the BESS-agents and the RES-agents. Each agent has a different owner with a specific profit agenda and risk levels. The agent tries to maximize the profit potential of the owner. The agents use historical trade data and expected weather conditions to maximize profitability. Phase-three is called the post-auctioning phase, in which the agreement between the BESS- and RES-agents is finalized, and the agents are ready for another 3-phases trade. Case studies compare different auctioning strategies and prove the effectiveness of the proposed MAS system

Ефективність ведення переговорів на ринку В2B: вплив доброзичливості та довіри

Метою статті є визначення впливу доброзичливості та довіри на ведення переговорів між виробниками та дистриб'юторами на ринках B2B. Методичним інструментарієм проведеного дослідження стали методи регресійного та факторного аналізу. Вихідні дані дослідження сформовано на основі результатів опитування 253 виробників та 53 дистриб'юторів. Дослідження емпірично підтверджує та теоретично доводить наявність конвергенції між рівнями сприйняття виробників та дистриб'юторів. Результати емпіричного аналізу засвідчили значний позитивний вплив довіри на інтегративну та кооперативну поведінку ведення переговорів, тоді як причинно-наслідковий зв’язок між доброзичливістю, інтегративною та кооперативною поведінкою в переговорах є незначним. Результати регресійного аналізу підтвердили відсутність позитивного впливу доброзичливості, як індикатора довіри, на інтегративну та кооперативну поведінку в переговорах. Отримані результати дослідження засвідчили, що довіра позитивно впливає на проведення інтеграційних переговорів. Результати факторного аналізу на основі головних компонент сприйняття виробників та дистриб’юторів вказують на незначний зв'язок між доброзичливістю та веденням інтегративних переговорів. Запропоновано будувати інтеграційні та кооперативні переговори між виробниками та дистриб’юторами залежно від ступеня довіри між ними. Отримані результати доповнюють теоретичні положення і методико-практичних рекомендацій щодо маркетингової комунікативної діяльності на ринках B2B. Результати проведеного дослідження можуть бути корисними для виробників та дистриб’юторів при побудові маркетингової комунікаційної стратегії. При цьому результати дослідження мають більший значний ефект на комунікаційну стратегію дистриб’юторів, які, порівняно із виробниками, результат діяльності яких є більш залежними від ефективності ведення переговорів. Результати дослідження мають практичне значення та можуть бути прийняті до уваги менеджерами при проведенні ефективних переговорів.This paper aims to determine the influence of benevolence and credibility on cooperative negotiation in the B2B markets between manufacturers and distributors using the dyadic methodology. The Principal Component Analysis (PCA) emphasizes the bi-dimensionality of trust, credibility, and benevolence by surveying 253 manufacturers and 53 distributors. Analyzing the perceptions of Producers and Retailers revealed the existence of a “perceptual convergence” between them. Moreover, the results from the dyadic analysis of the representative sample of the study showed a significant and positive impact of credibility on integrative and cooperative negotiation behavior. However, it also revealed an insignificant relation between cause and effect between benevolence and integrative and cooperative negotiation behavior. After using regression, benevolence as a dimension of trust positively impacts the integrative and cooperative negotiation behavior estimates reject. This research created a retailer and manufacturer integrative and cooperative negotiation behavior model for the B2B markets, adding to the greater knowledge of Marketing and Management. The proposed model shall aid manufacturers and retailers in effective integrative business negotiation. Retailers, who are more powerful than producers, benefit more from utilizing negotiation as a tool to exercise a better influence over producers/suppliers and, thus, reach better results. Nevertheless, the findings revealed that Trust impacts positively and directly integrative negotiation. Hence, it suggests building integrative and cooperative negotiations between producers and retailers depending on the degree of trust between them. Finally, the findings can be considered an evident aid for managers to accomplish effective negotiations better. It is worth mentioning that the results of the PCA of producers' and retailers' perceptions designate the insignificant relationship between benevolence and integrative negotiation