Electric vehicle charging at telco base station and bidirectional charging at hillslope descent technical-commercial cost-benefit study and scheduling-reservation system

© 2018 IEEE. Installing grid-connected photovoltaics (GCPV) at telecommunication company (Telco) base stations along highways, and providing electric vehicle (EV) charging facilities at strategic locations such as highway-side base stations offers a synergistic solution to both 1) displacing engine emissions using electricity from a renewable energy source, and 2) providing more highway EV charging stations for long distance EV driving. Strategically placed hillslope EV discharge stations would also offer EV users travelling downhill for long distances to sell their EV battery energy obtained from regenerative braking to the grid, freeing up the needed battery capacity to continue downhill with regenerative braking rather than losing it due to an already fully charged battery. This paper explores potential cost-benefits for investments in (i) highway-side Telco base stations with GCPV systems and EV charging stations as an additional source of revenue, and (ii) investments in EV discharge stations along hillslopes for EV users to sell battery energy from regenerative braking. The methodology used to gauge annual demand of new EV charge stations was by observation of existing highway-side EV charge station usage rates, estimating growth of EVs and charge stations, and reference to existing literature on EV charging tariffs, local electricity costs, and sizing/costing electrical equipment needed for the base station upgrade. To verify discharge kWh calculations from downhill descent regenerative braking, a downhill test drive of a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV) was done. To discourage non-charging EVs remaining parked at charger units, a design framework involving remote charger unit monitoring, reservation, messaging and automated financial incentives is also presented

The cost of radiology procedures using Activity Based Costing (ABC) for development of cost weights in implementation of casemix system in Malaysia

Presently there is a gross lack of information on cost and cost weights in many developing countries that implement casemix system. Furthermore, studies that employed Activity Based Costing method (ABC) to estimate the costs of radiology procedures were rarely done in developing countries, including Malaysia. The main objective of this study is to determine the costs of radiology procedures for each group in casemix system, in order to develop cost weights to be used in the implementation of the casemix system. An economic evaluation study was conducted in all units in the Department of Radiology in the first teaching hospital using the casemix system in Malaysia. From the 25,754 cases, 16,173 (62.8%) of them were from medical discipline. Low One Third and High One Third (L3H3) method was employed to trim the outlier cases. Output from the trimming, 15,387 cases were included in the study. The results revealed that the total inpatients’ charges of all the radiology procedures was RM1,820,533.00 while the cost imputed using ABC method was RM2,970,505.54. The biggest cost component were human resources in Radiology Unit (Mobile) (57.5%), consumables (78.5%) of Endovascular Interventional Radiology (EIR) Unit, equipment (81.4%) of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Unit, reagents (68.1%) of Medical Nuclear Unit. The one highest radiology cost weight, was for Malaysia Diagnosis Related Group (MY-DRG®) B-4-11-II (Hepatobiliary and Pancreas Neoplasms with severity level II, 2.8301). The method of calculation of the cost of procedures need to be revised by the hospital as findings from this study showed that the cost imposed to patient is lower than the actual cost

Development of modified double-weight code and its implementation in multi-rate transmissions

This paper presents a new code structure and its ability in supporting multiple transmission rates in point to point Spectral Amplitude Coding- Optical Code Division Multiple Access (SAC-OCDMA) links. The Double-Weight (DW) code family that has a basic fixed weight of 2 was proposed. Modified Double Weight (MDW) Code is a DW code family variation that has variable weight of greater than two. The ability of MDW codes to support simultaneous transmissions at different bit rates is shown through simulated results of the bit error rate (BER) and the eye patterns. Four MDW encoded channels were used at the bit rates of 2.5Gbps and 10Gbps. MDW code shown here significantly performs better than Hadamard and Modified Frequency Hopping (MFH) codes

Hybrid WDM/OCDMA system to support differentiated services in access network

This paper presents a new scheme of WDM/OCDMA system that capable of providing differentiated services in access network. We implement the proposed double-weight (DW) code in this system. The double-weight (DW) code has a fixed weight of 2 and exists for every natural number, n. In spectral-amplitude-coding optical code division multiple access (CDMA) systems, DW code has an ideal cross correlation to eliminate multiuser interference and suppress the noise. We analyze the performance of the system by evaluating the bit error rate (BER) of different services

Performance comparison of complementary and AND subtraction detection techniques for hybrid SCM SAC-OCDMA system

The subtraction detection techniques for a hybrid SCM spectral-amplitude-coding (SAC) OCDMA using double weight (DW) code family are investigated. The experimental simulation results show that the proposed new subtraction detection technique provides a better system performance

Structural crack detection system using internet of things (IoT) for structural health monitoring (SHM): a review

Monitoring the state of civil engineering infrastructure is critical for a country’s economic development since structures with long service life and timely maintenance have lower reconstruction costs. Crack occurrence is the most important element that influences the performance and lifespan of civil infrastructures like bridges and pipelines. As a result, several fracture detection and characterization approaches have been explored and developed in the domains of Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) throughout the last few decades. The major goal of implementing the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm is to enable the Internet-based connectivity extension of various typical SHM devices. As a result, connected devices can communicate and process data, opening new possibilities in the design of acquisition systems in various disciplines of research and engineering. The researchers have extended the application of the IoT paradigm to the SHM crack detection because of the advances, ensuring that the tests done in this framework can produce good results with promising future improvements. Thus, this paper reviews structural crack detection based IoT for SHM as reported by previous research in the literature. The strengths and limitations of current systems are discussed. This paper is aimed to serve as a reference for crack detection and characterisation researchers as well as others who are interested in SHM in general. In addition, several case studies on real structures, as well as laboratory experiments for monitoring structural crack health of civil engineering structures, are also presented

A global threats overview for Numeniini populations: synthesising expert knowledge for a group of declining migratory birds

The Numeniini is a tribe of thirteen wader species (Scolopacidae, Charadriiformes) of which seven are near-threatened or globally threatened, including two critically endangered. To help inform conservation management and policy responses, we present the results of an expert assessment of the threats that members of this taxonomic group face across migratory flyways. Most threats are increasing in intensity, particularly in non-breeding areas, where habitat loss resulting from residential and commercial development, aquaculture, mining, transport, disturbance, problematic invasive species, pollution and climate change were regarded as having the greatest detrimental impact. Fewer threats (mining, disturbance, problematic native species and climate change) were identified as widely affecting breeding areas. Numeniini populations face the greatest number of non-breeding threats in the East Asian-Australasian Flyway, especially those associated with coastal reclamation; related threats were also identified across the Central and Atlantic Americas, and East Atlantic flyways. Threats on the breeding grounds were greatest in Central and Atlantic Americas, East Atlantic and West Asian flyways. Three priority actions were associated with monitoring and research: to monitor breeding population trends (which for species breeding in remote areas may best be achieved through surveys at key non-breeding sites), to deploy tracking technologies to identify migratory connectivity, and to monitor land-cover change across breeding and non-breeding areas. Two priority actions were focused on conservation and policy responses: to identify and effectively protect key non-breeding sites across all flyways (particularly in the East Asian - Australasian Flyway), and to implement successful conservation interventions at a sufficient scale across human-dominated landscapes for species’ recovery to be achieved. If implemented urgently, these measures in combination have the potential to alter the current population declines of many Numeniini species and provide a template for the conservation of other groups of threatened species

Development of auditing in Malaysia: Legal, political and historical influences

This work investigates the role and contribution of external auditing as practised in the Malaysian society during the forty year period from independence in 1957 to just before the onset of the Asian Financial Crisis in 1997.It applies the political economic theory introduced by Tinker (1980) and refined by Cooper & Sherer (1984), which focuses on the social relations aspects of professional activity rather than economic forces alone.In a case study format where qualitative data was gathered mainly from primary and secondary source materials, the study found that the function of auditing in the Malaysian society in most cases is devoid of any essence of mission; instead it is created, shaped and transformed by the pressures which give rise to its development over time.The largely insignificant role that it serves is intertwined within the contexts in which it operates

Sustainability performance model: a case study of pneumatic nipple hose connector

Sustainability concept was first introduced by Dr Harlem Brundtland in 1980’s promoting the need to preserve today’s mother nature for the sake of our future generations. There are three main evaluation criteria’s involved in sustainability approach namely economics, environmental and social. In consumer product manufacturing industry, the economics criteria are measured by consider the total manufacturing costs where it evaluates the economic sustainability of a company in a long term. The impact to the environment during manufacturing process can be used to measure the environment criteria. The social criteria are complicated to evaluate. But focusing at production line workers’ health who works at the production line can be used to evaluate the social criteria because it gives direct impact to their performance. In this paper, the sustainability concept is applied at the production line in the production of a pneumatic nipple hose connector. The evaluation criteria which has been considered are total manufacturing costs, environmental impact, ergonomics impact and also energy used for manufacturing. This study involves machine learning optimization by using neural network model which carried out in two stages. The first stage is to predict the results based on experimental works. The second stage is by using inversed neural network model to determine the optimum cutting parameters so that it can be used to manufacture the pneumatic nipple hose connector. Through these stages, optimization of the manufacturing procedures to produce pneumatic nipple hose connector already considered the criteria for sustainability