Analysis of self-equilibrated networks through cellular modeling

Network equilibrium models represent a versatile tool for the analysis of interconnected objects and their relationships. They have been widely employed in both science and engineering to study the behavior of complex systems under various conditions, including external perturbations and damage. In this paper, network equilibrium models are revisited through graph-theory laws and attributes with special focus on systems that can sustain equilibrium in the absence of external perturbations (self-equilibrium). A new approach for the analysis of self-equilibrated networks is proposed; they are modeled as a collection of cells, predefined elementary network units that have been mathematically shown to compose any self-equilibrated network. Consequently, the equilibrium state of complex self-equilibrated systems can be obtained through the study of individual cell equilibria and their interactions. A series of examples that highlight the flexibility of network equilibrium models are included in the paper. The examples attest how the proposed approach, which combines topological as well as geometrical considerations, can be used to decipher the state of complex systems.Comment: 38 pages, 23 figure

On the boundedness of solutions of some fuzzy dynamical control systems

The asymptotic behavior of solutions of fuzzy control systems is a component of the study of fuzzy control theory. The study of stability for T-S (Takagi-Sugeno) fuzzy systems, which process qualitative data through linguistic expressions, is the subject of this paper. Asymptotic stability is conservative in many real-world applications due to measurement noise and other disruptions. The ultimate limit, which indicates that the mistakes stay in a specific area close to the origin after a long enough amount of time, is a crucial characteristic that is frequently defined for such systems. We are interested with the problem of the state feedback controller for T-S fuzzy models with uncertainties where the global exponential ultimate boundedness of solutions is studied for certain fuzzy control systems. We use common quadratic Lyapunov function and parallel distributed compensation controller techniques to study the asymptotic behavior of the solutions of fuzzy control system in presence of perturbations. An example demonstrating the validity of the main result is discussed

Preliminary validity of the BNSSS-20 in Arabic: Exploratory study on basic needs satisfaction in sport for a sample of Tunisian athletes

[EN] Background Satisfaction of fundamental needs is an important concept in sport, but currently there is no tool in Arabic to measure this construct. Basic needs are often linked to high rates of motiva- tion and performance. It is necessary to develop tools to assess psychological needs in the sport context. Aim This study aimed to validate the Basic Needs Satisfaction in Sport Scale (BNSSS) in Arabic language across Tunisian athletes, and to test its psychometric properties (factorial struc- ture, internal reliability, construct validity, and sensitivity). Methods Athletes in various sports participated in this study (370 men, 146 women; mean age 18.35) and voluntarily completed the Arabic version of the BNSSS-20. Both exploratory (EFA, N = 294; males: 68%; females: 32%; [14–18] = 182; [19–28] = 112) and confirmatory (CFA; N = 222; males: 76.6%; females: 23.4%; [14–18] = 103; [19–28] = 119) factor analyses were examined. Results Results from the EFA suggest that the BNSSS scale reflects the theoretical model well, with good internal consistency for all factors. All 20 items of BNSSS revealed excellent reliability (McDonald’s omega = 0.773, Cronbach’s α = 0.886, Gutmann’s λ6 = 0.970) and good tem- poral stability (ICC = 0.84, 95% CI = 0.55–0.93) over a 4-week period. Likewise, the CFA fit indices were excellent

7.4 Ecosystèmes

The paper presents a forecast of the quality of Tunisian ecosystems in 2030. Two different scenarios are presented – one with climate change forcing, - one without climate change forcing. Under climate change conditions the north of Tunisia will have increasing forest fire risks. Climate change conditions could also increase the risks of biological invasions

Reliability and Validity of a New Taekwondo-Specific Change-of-Direction Speed Test With Striking Techniques in Elite Taekwondo Athletes:A Pilot Study

International audienceThe purpose of this study was to examine the test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminative validity of a new taekwondo-specific change-of-direction (COD) speed test with striking techniques (TST) in elite taekwondo athletes. Twenty (10 males and 10 females) elite (athletes who compete at national level) and top-elite (athletes who compete at national and international level) taekwondo athletes with an average training background of 8.9 +/- 1.3 years of systematic taekwondo training participated in this study. During the two-week test-retest period, various generic performance tests measuring COD speed, balance, speed, and jump performance were carried out during the first week and as a retest during the second week. Three TST trials were conducted with each athlete and the best trial was used for further analyses. The relevant performance measure derived from the TST was the time with striking penalty (TST-TSP). TST-TSP performances amounted to 10.57 +/- 1.08 s for males and 11.74 +/- 1.34 s for females. The reliability analysis of the TST performance was conducted after logarithmic transformation, in order to address the problem of heteroscedasticity. In both groups, the TST demonstrated a high relative test-retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients and 90% compatibility limits were 0.80 and 0.47 to 0.93, respectively). For absolute reliability, the TST's typical error of measurement (TEM), 90% compatibility limits, and magnitudes were 4.6%, 3.4 to 7.7, for males, and 5.4%, 3.9 to 9.0, for females. The homogeneous sample of taekwondo athletes meant that the TST's TEM exceeded the usual smallest important change (SIC) with 0.2 effect size in the two groups. The new test showed mostly very large correlations with linear sprint speed (r = 0.71 to 0.85) and dynamic balance (r = -0.71 and -0.74), large correlations with COD speed (r = 0.57 to 0.60) and vertical jump performance (r = -0.50 to -0.65), and moderate correlations with horizontal jump performance (r = -0.34 to -0.45) and static balance (r = -0.39 to -0.44). Top-elite athletes showed better TST performances than elite counterparts. Receiver operating characteristic analysis indicated that the TST effectively discriminated between top-elite and elite taekwondo athletes. In conclusion, the TST is a valid, and sensitive test to evaluate the COD speed with taekwondo specific skills, and reliable when considering ICC and TEM. Although the usefulness of the TST is questioned to detect small performance changes in the present population, the TST can detect moderate changes in taekwondo-specific COD speed

The Effects of Vapor Gard on some Physiological Traits of Durum Wheat and Barley Leaves under Water Stress

The use of antitranspirants is one method of mitigating water while increasing the yield of cereal crops. Experiments were carried out on a durum wheat (Triticum durum L.) variety (Karim) and a barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) variety (Rihane) to study the effects of Vapor Gard (VG; di-1-p-menthene), an antitranspirant, on two physiological traits at two different growth stages. The study was conducted in a glasshouse under water stress and VG was sprayed twice at three concentrations (5, 7, and 10%) at tillering and stem elongation stages. VG spray reduced the effect of water stress on durum wheat and barley varieties. Leaf water potential (LWP) was significantly increased, albeit at different rates, for the two cereal species. However, no significant change was observed for photosynthetic rate (PR). These results favor the use of VG although more studies are recommended on other physiological traits to strongly support the application of this antitranspirant

A sophisticated Drowsiness Detection System via Deep Transfer Learning for real time scenarios

Driver drowsiness is one of the leading causes of road accidents resulting in serious physical injuries, fatalities, and substantial economic losses. A sophisticated Driver Drowsiness Detection (DDD) system can alert the driver in case of abnormal behavior and avoid catastrophes. Several studies have already addressed driver drowsiness through behavioral measures and facial features. In this paper, we propose a hybrid real-time DDD system based on the Eyes Closure Ratio and Mouth Opening Ratio using simple camera and deep learning techniques. This system seeks to model the driver's behavior in order to alert him/her in case of drowsiness states to avoid potential accidents. The main contribution of the proposed approach is to build a reliable system able to avoid false detected drowsiness situations and to alert only the real ones. To this end, our research procedure is divided into two processes. The offline process performs a classification module using pretrained Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to detect the drowsiness of the driver. In the online process, we calculate the percentage of the eyes' closure and yawning frequency of the driver online from real-time video using the Chebyshev distance instead of the classic Euclidean distance. The accurate drowsiness state of the driver is evaluated with the aid of the pretrained CNNs based on an ensemble learning paradigm. In order to improve models' performances, we applied data augmentation techniques for the generated dataset. The accuracies achieved are 97 % for the VGG16 model, 96% for VGG19 model and 98% for ResNet50 model. This system can assess the driver's dynamics with a precision rate of 98%

Fuzzy logic-based vehicle safety estimation using V2V communications and on-board embedded ROS-based architecture for safe traffic management system in hail city

Estimating the state of surrounding vehicles is crucial to either prevent or avoid collisions with other road users. However, due to insufficient historical data and the unpredictability of future driving tactics, estimating the safety status is a difficult undertaking. To address this problem, an intelligent and autonomous traffic management system based on V2V technology is proposed. The main contribution of this work is to design a new system that uses a real-time control system and a fuzzy logic algorithm to estimate safety. The robot operating system (ROS) is the foundation of the control architechture, which connects all the various system nodes and generates the decision in the form of a speech and graphical message. The safe path is determined by a safety evaluation system that combines sensor data with a fuzzy classifier. Moreover, the suitable information processed by each vehicle unit is shared in the group to avoid unexpected problems related to speed, sudden braking, unplanned deviation, street holes, road bumps, and any kind of street issues. The connection is provided through a network based on the ZigBee protocol. The results of vehicle tests show that the proposed method provides a more reliable estimate of safety as compared to other methods

Integrated use of residues from olive mill and winery for lipase production by solid state fermentation with Aspergillus sp

Two phase olive mill waste (TPOMW) is presently the major waste produced by the olive mill industry. This waste has potential to be used as substrate for solid state fermentation (SSF) despite of its high concentration of phenolic compounds and low nitrogen content. In this work, it is demonstrated that mixtures of TPOMW with winery wastes support the production of lipase by Aspergillus spp. By agar plate screening, Aspergillus niger MUM 03.58, Aspergillus ibericus MUM 03.49 and Aspergillus uvarum MUM 08.01 were chosen for lipase production by SSF. Plackett-Burman experimental design was employed to evaluate the effect of substrate composition and time on lipase production. The highest amounts of lipase were produced by A. ibericus on a mixture of TPOMW, urea and exhausted grape mark (EGM). Urea was found to be the most influent factor for the lipase production. Further optimization of lipase production by A. ibericus using a full factorial design (32) conducted to optimal conditions of substrate composition (0.073 g urea/g and 25% of EGM) achieving 18.67 U/g of lipolytic activity.Jose Manuel Salgado is grateful for Postdoctoral fellowship (EX-2010-0402) of Education Ministry of Spanish Government. Luis Abrunhosa was supported by the grant SFRH/BPD/43922/2008 from Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia-FCT, Portugal. Authors thank Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) for financial support through the project FCT Pest-OE/EQB/LA0023/2011

Screening of winery and olive mill wastes for lignocellulolytic enzyme production from Aspergillus species by solid-state fermentation

Wastes from olive oil and wine industries (as exhausted grape marc, vineshoot trimmings, two-phase olive mill waste, vinasses, and olive mill wastewater) were evaluated for lignocellulolytic enzyme production (as endocellulases, endoxylanases, and feruloyl esterases) by solid-state fermentation (SSF) with Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus ibericus, and Aspergillus uvarum. To study the effect of different solid medium composition and time in enzyme production, a PlackettBurman experimental design was used. Variables that had a higher positive effect in lignocellulolytic enzyme production were urea, time, and exhausted grape marc. The maximum values of enzymatic activity per unit of substrate dry mass were found with A. niger for feruloyl esterase. Enzymatic extracts from SSF with A. niger achieved maximum feruloyl esterase activity (89.53 U/g) and endoxylanase activity (3.06 U/g) and with A. uvarum for endocellulase activity (6.77 U/g). The enzyme cocktails obtained in the SSF extracts may have applications in biorefinery industries.Jose Manuel Salgado is grateful for the postdoctoral fellowship (EX-2010-0402) of the Education Ministry of Spanish Government. Luis Abrunhosa was supported by the grant SFRH/BPD/43922/2008 from Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia-FCT, Portugal