Application of Polyurethane Products in Accelerated Construction of Innovative Noise Barrier

Noise barriers (sound walls) are usually constructed along roadways to mitigate the airborne noise emanating from vehicles. They are currently built using various materials including precast concrete panels, masonry, wood and transparent sheets. The main challenge in roadside construction is the obstruction of roadways during the construction, which may result in traffic congestion, public dissatisfaction, car collision and subsequently fatalities. In order to decrease the risk of roadside construction, accelerated and non-obstructive methods are highly preferred by transportation authorities. An innovative wall system comprised of polyurethane products is proposed, developed and investigated for application in accelerated construction of noise barriers. The proposed sound wall comprises stay-in-place poly-blocks as formwork, two types of polyurethane foam (PF) as structural cores and polyurea as a coating of the wall surfaces. The poly-blocks are stacked layer by layer on the wall footing and form a wall with cylindrical voids. A fast-curing liquid mixture of rigid or light PF is injected into poly-blocks voids to act as the main structural element. Steel rebars connect the PF cores to the wall footing as anchorage system. A polyurea or shotcrete coating is sprayed on both sides of the wall in order to enhance the resistance of poly-blocks surfaces against abrasion, stone impact, weathering, fire development, chemicals and penetration. This construction technique and materials result in less obstruction, faster construction and efficient sound walls in terms of sound attenuation. A comprehensive experimental program including 80 specimen and 16 full-scale tests was conducted to determine the materials mechanical properties as well as structural behavior of full-scale walls, which were constructed using different PF and rebar arrangements. In addition, three-dimensional finite element models of the laboratory specimens and the full-scale walls were simulated and verified using the experimental results. The experimental and numerical results indicated that the structural performance of the proposed wall system is satisfactory for the application of noise barrier according to the relevant building codes. Based on practical observations, the wall system can be implemented in an accelerated and non-obstructive construction method. Finally, detailed design guidelines are prepared for various practical conditions

Theory of nucleation of water properties of some clathrate like cluster structures

The tranquility of classical homogeneous nucleation theory has been disturbed by the introduction of statistical mechanical correction factors to a basically thermodynamic theory. These factors, which appear to be essential, destroy much of the agreement with experiment in the case of water vapor. A molecular model for the pre-nucleation water clusters is proposed with a view toward resolving some of these difficulties. As a first step, the Properties of a few specific cluster configurations have been examined. Clathrate-like structures containing 16 to 57 water molecules are discussed. The hydrogen bonds were treated as simple harmonic oscillators for the purpose of calculating normal mode frequencies. The Helmholtz free energy of formation of the cluster is calculated from the appropriate partition functions. For these clathrate-like structures the free energy of formation was not found to be a smoothly increasing function of the number of molecules but showed minima corresponding to close cages --Abstract, page iv

Islamic Religious Brand Community Support Practices in Encouraging Creativity Values in The Religiocentric Market of Thailand

The practice of supporting the Islamic Religious Brand Community in Encouraging Creativity Values in Thailand's Religiocentric Market is one effort that is worth considering in online transactions considering that in the conditions of virtual transactions there are many product choices so that consumers will find it easy to get goods according to religious criteria, especially halal and non-halal products so that consumers can compare the type and value of products with others. Through this religious brand community, consumers create a bond based on shared values. For the religiocentric market, especially in Thailand, shared religious values become a strong glue and influence consumer purchasing decisions. Support from the religious community which can be in the form of Religious Support, Emotional Support and Informational Support is an antecedent variable that is considered to form Customer Ethical Perceptions and trust which ultimately leads to their willingness to be involved in creativity in the Thai Religious Market. The concept above is value co-creation, namely value creation that involves customers as active actors in creating the value of the goods themselves. This research uses explanatory research with a quantitative approach to analyze data and test it. The research aims to determine the relationship between two or more variables regarding Islamic Religious Brand Community Support Practices in Encouraging Creativity Values in Thailand's Religious Market. The results of this research show that there is a close relationship that is mutually sustainable and influences each other between Islamic Religious Brand Community Support Practices in Encouraging Creativity Values in the Thai Religious Market which causes an increase in the economic level and welfare of the community, both producers and consumers, especially seen from the perspective of the religious community in Thailand

Q-T interval prolongation in cirrhosis: Relationship and severity

Background: Cirrhosis as the final stage of progressive fibrosis of liver can affect other organs such as lungs, kidneys and heart. "Cirrhotic cardiomyopathy" involves the electrophysiological abnormalities such as QT interval prolongation. We assessed correlation between corrected QT interval prolongation and severity of cirrhosis based on Child Classification in each ECG lead. Methods: In this case-control study, the patients attending the outpatient clinic and inpatient department of internal medicine of Velayat Hospital in Qazvin were enrolled from September 2014 to July 2015. Total samples were 74 patients, half of which were used as controls. Cirrhosis severity was determined as per Child Classification. Both groups had Ca2+, Mg2+, K+ tested and 12- lead ECG was obtained. The QT interval was corrected by two different formulas: (1) QTc=QT/√RR (QTc1); (2) QTc=QT+1.75 (heart rate-60) (QTc2). To analyze the data, the software SPSS Version 16 and Mann-Whitney, Pearson’s chisquare test-Kruskal-Wallis, and t-tests were used. Results: The mean of QTc1 and QTc2 was longer in cirrhotics than the control group. There was a significant correlation between Child score and length of QTc1 in leads: III (p=0.032), AVL (p=0.041), V2 (p=0.049), V6 (p=0.015). There were significant differences in length of QTc1 in leads: V3 (p=0.031) and V6 (p=0.021); and QTc2 in lead V3 (p=0.039) between Child Classification. Conclusions: Cirrhosis can induce QTc interval prolongation. Lead V3 has statistically significant correlation with the severity of cirrhosis based on child classification. We propose that QT interval prolongation be added as a criterion for prioritizing liver transplantation

Entity Recommendation for Everyday Digital Tasks

Recommender systems can support everyday digital tasks by retrieving and recommending useful information contextually. This is becoming increasingly relevant in services and operating systems. Previous research often focuses on specific recommendation tasks with data captured from interactions with an individual application. The quality of recommendations is also often evaluated addressing only computational measures of accuracy, without investigating the usefulness of recommendations in realistic tasks. The aim of this work is to synthesize the research in this area through a novel approach by (1) demonstrating comprehensive digital activity monitoring, (2) introducing entity-based computing and interaction, and (3) investigating the previously overlooked usefulness of entity recommendations and their actual impact on user behavior in real tasks. The methodology exploits context from screen frames recorded every 2 seconds to recommend information entities related to the current task. We embodied this methodology in an interactive system and investigated the relevance and influence of the recommended entities in a study with participants resuming their real-world tasks after a 14-day monitoring phase. Results show that the recommendations allowed participants to find more relevant entities than in a control without the system. In addition, the recommended entities were also used in the actual tasks. In the discussion, we reflect on a research agenda for entity recommendation in context, revisiting comprehensive monitoring to include the physical world, considering entities as actionable recommendations, capturing drifting intent and routines, and considering explainability and transparency of recommendations, ethics, and ownership of data

EntityBot: Supporting everyday digital tasks with entity recommendations

Everyday digital tasks can highly benefit from systems that recommend the right information to use at the right time. However, existing solutions typically support only specific applications and tasks. In this demo, we showcase EntityBot, a system that captures context across application boundaries and recommends information entities related to the current task. The user's digital activity is continuously monitored by capturing all content on the computer screen using optical character recognition. This includes all applications and services being used and specific to individuals' computer usages such as instant messaging, emailing, web browsing, and word processing. A linear model is then applied to detect the user's task context to retrieve entities such as applications, documents, contact information, and several keywords determining the task. The system has been evaluated with real-world tasks, demonstrating that the recommendation had an impact on the tasks and led to high user satisfaction

Improving genomics-based predictions for precision medicine through active elicitation of expert knowledge

Motivation: Precision medicine requires the ability to predict the efficacies of different treatments for a given individual using high-dimensional genomic measurements. However, identifying predictive features remains a challenge when the sample size is small. Incorporating expert knowledge offers a promising approach to improve predictions, but collecting such knowledge is laborious if the number of candidate features is very large. Results: We introduce a probabilistic framework to incorporate expert feedback about the impact of genomic measurements on the outcome of interest and present a novel approach to collect the feedback efficiently, based on Bayesian experimental design. The new approach outperformed other recent alternatives in two medical applications: prediction of metabolic traits and prediction of sensitivity of cancer cells to different drugs, both using genomic features as predictors. Furthermore, the intelligent approach to collect feedback reduced the workload of the expert to approximately 11%, compared to a baseline approach.Peer reviewe