Fuzzy anti-windup scheme for practical control of point-to-point (Ptp) positioning systems

The Positioning Systems Generally Need A Controller To Achieve High Accuracy, Fast Response And Robustness. In Addition, Ease Of Controller Design And Simplicity Of Controller Structure Are Very Important For Practical Application. For Satisfying These Requirements, Nominal Characteristic Trajectory Following (NCTF) Controller Has Been Proposed As A Practical PTP Positioning Control. However, The Effect Of Actuator Saturation Cannot Be Completely Compensated Due To Integrator Windup Because Of Plant Parameter Variations. This Paper Presents A Method To Improve The NCTF Controller For Overcoming The Problem Of Integrator Windup By Adopting A Fuzzy Anti-Windup Scheme. The Improved NCTF Controller Is Evaluated Through Simulation Using Dynamic Model Of A Rotary Positioning System. The Results Show That The Improved NCTF Controller Is Adequate To Compensate The Effect Of Integrator Windup

Multi-omics reveal nuanced pathways in placental development

The placenta remains poorly studied despite being implicated in many pregnancy and chronic disorders. Trophoblast invasion and nutrient transport are critical placental processes where defects can lead to preeclampsia and other diseases. We set out to characterize protein pathways underlying those processes, using mouse as a model. We profiled the placenta proteome and phosphoproteome at embryonic day (e)7.5, when trophoblast invasion peaks, and at e9.5, when nutrient transport is occurring, and integrated this data with RNA-seq. Comparing the unmodified proteome and the transcriptome revealed that most upregulated proteins are not the result of transcript changes. However, genes upregulated at both levels reflected expected functions, such as enrichment of migration processes at e7.5 and of metabolic processes at e9.5. Proteins that were only upregulated at the protein level contained potentially novel genes involved in migration and patterning, and indicated that the placenta at e9.5 is under stress. The phosphoproteome revealed novel phosphosites on placental transcription factors (TFs) that were conserved in human and differentially phosphorylated in our dataset, indicating an important role for the sites in modulating TF function. When we combined the phosphoproteome with the other datasets, we found further clues that e9.5 placenta is a stressful environment, and we identified a posttranscriptionally and posttranslationally regulated network at this timepoint. This analysis provides a systems-level view of gene expression patterns at two critical timepoints of placental development, and opens the door for experimental validation of potentially novel proteins, phosphosites, and pathways that may be critical for normal placental function

The Importance of Good Governance on Achieving Sustainable Development Case Study: Yemen

Governance has become one of the most important concepts in developing countries. Consequently, many countries are trying to pursue good governance and adoption according to the established concept of governance in order to achieve the desired sustainable economic growth and development. Yemeni economy has been in deep recession due to Saudi alliance war since March 2015. Once the war stops, restructuring economy required a new development approach with firm and well define good governance principles aiming to achieve Sustainable Development goals. Yemen as one of the least developing country, not all of its efforts to move ahead economically have been successful. There is more than one reason for its failure to achieve sustainable economic development, but one is absence of good governance. International organizations, donors, and researchers have prescribed good governance as a solution to persistent development problems. This paper is an attempt to enrich this subject, at least in part, by examining the value of adopting good governance on achieving sustainable development. Based on research findings and learning from other countries experience, development progress and challenges, general framework to implement good governance has been recommended to be consider in the future national development agenda to tolerate achieving sustainable development. Building human capacity is one of the key requirements needed to make a qualitative shift towards sustainable development. The current situation of sustainable development and governance in Yemen as a case study has been reviewed in an explanatory methodologies using regional statistics and global database such as UN organizations, World Bank, HDI, SDGs and Governance indicators to examine the progress made over the last decade. Paper recommended practical steps and actions to be taken to help the official government to reform the current institutional arrangements at the regional as well as national levels, such as adopt governance principles, long term planning, and establishing “High Councils for good governance” to ensure integrated policy formulation, adequate cooperation and coordination among different government entities, and between the government and non-state stakeholders. These recommendations and result have been presented to the Yemeni official government and economic institutions aiming to be integrated in the reform strategies, in particular in the Yemen National Development Strategy (2030). Based on research findings and learning from other countries experience, development progress and challenges, general framework to implement good governance has been recommended to be consider in the future national development agenda to achieve sustainable development.   Keywords: Sustainable Development, Good Governance, Economic Reform, Yemen, SDG

Predictors of Statistics Anxiety Among Graduate Students in Saudi Arabia

Problem The problem addressed in this study is the anxiety experienced by graduate students toward statistics courses, which often causes students to delay taking statistics courses until the end of their program. Students believe that statistics courses are not essential and are the greatest obstacles to obtaining their degree. Previous theoretical models have focused on predicting student performance in statistics. However, this study aims to identify specific factors that could decrease student statistics anxiety and enhance positive attitudes and self-efficacy toward statistics. The study developed a conceptual model to predict statistics anxiety among graduate students in educational and social science majors in Saudi Arabia, which should improve the quality of statistics education in higher education. Method A cross-sectional non-experimental survey design was employed to collect data during the Spring of 2022 from 356 graduate students in Saudi Arabia. Participants completed a self-report survey measuring their (a) demographic information, (b) statistics anxiety (SAS), (c) attitudes toward statistics (SATS), and (d) current statistics selfefficacy (CSSE). The dependent variable was statistics anxiety, while the independent variables were previous statistics experience, attitudes toward statistics, and statistics self-efficacy. Data analyses included descriptive statistics and structural equation modeling (SEM) to evaluate the relationship among the study variables, while a multigroup analysis was used to examine gender differences in the study model. Results The study indicated that the participants reported a moderate level of statistics anxiety and positive attitudes toward statistics, and a low to moderate level of statistics self-efficacy. Results also found that attitudes toward statistics were negatively associated with statistics anxiety, but previous statistics experience positively predicted attitudes toward statistics and current statistics self-efficacy. Mediation analysis revealed that attitudes toward statistics significantly mediated the relationship between previous statistics experience and statistics anxiety. A multi-group analysis showed that the research model was equally applicable to males and females and no significant gender differences were observed at the individual path level. Conclusions The present study investigated the relationship among previous statistics experience, attitudes toward statistics, statistics self-efficacy, and statistics anxiety among graduate students in Saudi Arabia. The findings suggest that positive previous statistics experience and attitudes toward statistics can account for reducing students’ statistics anxiety. Results have important implications for educators and counselors who work with students experiencing statistics anxiety, such as promising positive attitudes toward statistics and enhancing students’ experience with mathematics and statistics

THE ICONOGRAPHY OF DEPICTING NAKED ENEMIES IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

دلالات تصوير الأسرى العراة في مصر القديمة وبلاد العراق القديم [دراسة مقارنة] [AR] تهدف هذه الدراسة إلى مناقشة دلالات تصوير الأعداء العراة في كل من مصر القديمة والعراق القديم. وتقتصر على تمثيل الأعداء العراة من الرجال فقط دون الأطفال أو النساء. ويكمن السبب في اختيار هذا الموضوع إلى إلقاء المزيد من الضوء على أوجه الشبه والاختلاف بين تمثيل الأسرى العراة، وكذلك المقارنة بين مفهوم تجريدهم من ملابسهم في مناظر كلتا الحضارتين. وقد ناقشت الدراسة أهم هذه التمثيلات واستعرضتها للإجابة على كثير من الأسئلة التي تدور حول هذا الموضوع ، ومنها: ما الحضارة التي ظهر هذا النمط في مناظرها أكثر من الأخرى هل هي مصر القديمة أم العراق القديم؟ وهل العري مرتبط بمفهوم عقوبة الأسرى أو العصاة بشكل عام؟ وإلى أي مدى يرتبط العري بمفهوم العار أو الخزي والمهانة بشكل عام وبخاصة للعدو المهزوم؟ وما مدى ارتباط العري بفكرة الموت؟ وهل اقتصر تمثيل الأسرى وقد جردوا من ملابسهم في مناظر مصر القديمة والعراق القديم على الأعداء الأحياء فقط، أم على الأموات منهم، أم كلاهما الأعداء الأحياء والأموات؟ وقد استنتجت هذه الدراسة أن مناظر الأسرى العراة من الأعداء قد مثلت في العراق القديم أكثر منها في مصر القديمة، كما أن العري قد ارتبط بمفهوم العقاب لتعميق إحساس الخزي والعار وامتهان الأعداء. ولم يقتصر تمثيل الأسرى العراة الأموات دون الأحياء، بل مُثّل كلاهما عراة ، وإن زادت أمثلة مناظر الأسرى الموتى العراة أو المحكوم عليهم بالموت، حيث اقترن تمثيل الأسرى العراة الموتى مع الإعدام بطرق عديدة غاية في القسوة، كالسلخ والوضع على الخازوق، وبخاصة في مناظر العراق القديم في العصر الآشوري الحديث. [En] This study focuses on the iconography of depicting naked enemies in the ancient Egyptian and Iraqi civilizations. It is limited to the representation of naked, male enemies only, not women or children. The reason for choosing this topic is to shed more light on the similarities and differences in depicting scenes of naked captives and the concept of stripping prisoners of their clothes in both civilizations. This study also discusses and reviews the most important representations to answer many questions. For instance, which civilization portrays this motif more than ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia? Is nudity associated with the punishment of enemies, captives, prisoners, or the disobedient in general? To what extent is nudity generally related to the concept of shame concerning the defeated one or the enemy? To what extent is nudity related to the notion of death? Is stripping prisoners of their clothes in scenes from ancient Egypt and Iraq restricted to living enemies, the dead among them, or both? The study concludes that scenes of naked enemies in Mesopotamia occur more frequently than in ancient Egypt and that nudity is linked to the concept of punishment to deepen the sense of shame, disgrace, and humiliation of enemies. Moreover, the representation of nakedness includes dead and living enemies in both civilizations. However, depictions of dead, naked captives are also combined with cruel methods of execution, such as skinning and impalement, especially in Neo-Assyrian scenes

Flood Modelling Tool

The risk of pluvial flooding is going to increase as climate change causes an increase in intense precipitation along with urbanisation leading to an increase in impermeable surfaces. In the last decade, cities such as Malmö and Copenhagen have already experienced severe pluvial flooding that has caused extensive damage. Adapting to climate change by creating flood resilient urban areas is therefore important and blue-green infrastructure (BGI) may be one measure to accomplish this.A hydrological model called TFM-DYN has been used to investigate whether BGI can aid the mitigation of pluvial flooding. TFM-DYN can also assist in selecting the best locations of BGIs. The problem of modeling urban floods using distributed high resolution hydrological models while considering the hydrological process in the upstream area is difficult due to the limited current computation capacity. However, coupling a distributed hydrological model (TFM-DYN) with an other semi distributed models (HYPE) is crucial to enable simulate, predict and map floods with high-resolution for an urban area while considering its catchment area. With the using of the new suggested coupled hydrological model, it is possible to connect and use the output results from HYPE model as an input to a distributed model (TFM-DYN). The interaction between HYPE and TFM-DYN will consider the hydrologic process occurred outside the model boundary of the interested urban area. The coupling of the two models will help initiating the model with real water depth data that may lead to more realistic simulation. The procedure of input data manipulation using the two model interactions is explained in details.The model is tested on a selected urban area to dynamically simulate the changes in the water depth with time using high resolution gridded data. The new coupled model can be of a great tool for wide range of user and stakeholders as an example to municipalities, water experts, insurance companies and to all other interested water organizations who have access to regional catchment models and in need for a high-resolution, flood simulation and mapping model

EMI reduction on high-speed PCB using electromagnetic bandgap structure

The need for high-speed printed circuit board design whilst maintaining signal integrity and EMC standards have increased over the years in the modern integrated circuitry field. The use of electromagnetic bandgap structures (EBGs) have been demonstrated to provide excellent reduction of electromagnetic interference (EMI). In this study, a three by three planar of spiral, with and without patch were designed, simulated and fabricated on a low-cost FR4 substrate with permittivity of 4.3 and thickness of 1.6 mm. The designs of spiral EBGs with and without patch have the dimensions of 36 mm x 36 mm covering 9 unit cells. The performance of the designed EBGs were simulated and measured experimentally, and it was found to be in acceptable agreement. It was found that the spiral EBG without patch experienced a bandgap that covers from 4.5 to 6.3 GHz by using a dispersion diagram. Conversely, the bandgap for the spiral EBG with patch structure was found to be from 4.5 to 7.8 GHz with wider bandwidth. Owing to the desirable results demonstrated by the spiral EBG design with patch, it was then integrated into the high-speed circuit design to suppress the EMI emitted by the board. In this work, two low and three high-speed PCB designs were fabricated to track the desired EMI levels above 4.5 GHz. The third design of the high-speed PCB emitted the highest radiation emission (4.54 GHz) was selected for integration. The spiral EBG with patch structure successfully suppressed the EMI that occur at 4.54 GHz. Its effectiveness further suggests that the proposed EBG spiral with patch structure design is appropriate for EMI suppression that may occur from 4.5 to 7.8 GHz

Connecting RPA Development and Business : A Tool for Process Definition, Agile RPA Development and Maintenance

The world of automation is changing rapidly, especially in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) field, as companies implement software robots to alleviate the repeatable manual work. This thesis has two purposes. The first purpose is to find out if it is possible to improve Robotic Process Automation projects’ kick-off, communication, documentation, and maintenance with a PDD-SDD Tool. And the second purpose is to demonstrate how the PDD-SDD Tool was designed and developed. The initial hypothesis for the project: A specialized Tool for automating documentation and project kick-off could streamline RPA projects and mitigate communication-related misunderstandings. The methods used in the thesis assisted with understanding the needs of the RPA professionals that are working with the whole RPA project life-cycle. For creating the starting point, the hypothesis was constructed by analyzing the current issues in RPA projects in the industry. Based on the hypothesis an Initial Design of the Tool was created and interview questions were produced. Next, three rounds of structured interviews were held for data gathering and demonstrating the developed prototypes. Lastly, a final presentation of the Tool was given to the same study group and improvement proposals were gathered. The findings of this thesis align with the initial hypothesis based on the data gathered from the interviewees during the interviews, the Tool aids the professionals with process definition by providing guiding questions during the definition process. Automated documentation based on the developers’ code alleviated with documentation burden, which leads to up-to-date documentation, which also leads to better communication. The automatically generated code base for the developers created from the process definition and the up-to-date documentation enhanced maintenance work dramatically. The value of this thesis lies with the actualization of a custom Tool developed specifically for MOST Digital’s RPA projects’ life-cycle. Also, the methodologies used in this thesis for data extraction could be further used to collect new features for the developed Tool or to develop a new tool altogether. This project was initiated in Fall 2019 and finished in Summer of 2021, and resulted with a fully functional StandAlone version of the designed PDD-SDD Tool

The Impact of Knowledge Behavioural Factors on Tacit Knowledge Retention: Empirical Study in Oil and Gas Industry

Organisation need be more effective in retaining the tacit knowledge (know-how and know-what) and made it accessible for another staff to be more productive and enable management to make better decisions. Relying on explicit knowledge and old-style training courses is simply no longer effective to transfer or retain knowledge; therefore, understanding the role of tacit knowledge retentions as part of knowledge management is becoming increasingly more important to fulfil the organisation strategic goals. To attain the aim, theoretical and empirical study using (275) samples from different international oil and gas companies have quantitatively assessed three main factors; the strategic impact of tacit knowledge loss, the impact of knowledge and organisational behaviour at the individual level on knowledge retention within the organization. Based on the study results, both knowledge and organisational behaviour shows direct impact in knowledge retention enhancement. What knowledge and whose knowledge should be emphasised to reduce the impact of crew change. Knowledge management implementation to be the most important factor as Learning and sharing knowledge is affected by the cognitive processes and the way the organisation practice and implement the knowledge share such as mini-workshops, short assignment and community of practice (CoP). The last factor is positive individual attitude, which reflected in more effectiveness knowledge share and transfer. These factors improve tacit knowledge retention and fulfil the strategic goals such as competitiveness advantage and improve the performance, productivity and employee’s effectiveness. Keywords: Oil and Gas, Knowledge Retention, Tacit knowledge, knowledge behaviour, organisational behaviour

Effect Of Non Dental Glass Fiber Orientation On Transverse Strength Of Dental Fiber Reinforced Composite

FRC is widely used in dentistry especially for dental bridges construction. E glass fiber is commonly used because it has good properties and good bonding with polymers. Its availability is limited and its price quite expensive in Indonesia. Non dental glass fiber is available in Indonesia with lower price. The aim of this research was to evaluate the effect of non dental glass fiber orientation on transverse strength of dental FRC. Non dental glass fiber (HJ, China) with two orientations (Roving and Woven roving), Flowable composite (CharmFil Flow, DenKist, Korea) , Silane coupling agent (Monobond S, Ivoclar Vivadent, Liechtenstein) and distilled water. 24 specimens of non dental glass FRC, divided into 2 groups. The specimens was immersed in water for 24 hours and 7 days. The data were analyzed by Independent sample T-test. T-test analysis showed that for transverse strength with 24 hours water immersion there was a significant difference between the two orientation groups (p 0.05). In conclusion: there was different transverse strength between roving and woven roving orientation in dental FRC