Pressurised calcination-atmospheric carbonation of limestone for cyclic CO2 capture from flue gases

A study was carried out to investigate the CO2 capture performance of limestone under atmospheric carbonations following pressurised calcination. A series of tests was carried out to study the role of pressurised calcination using a fluidised bed reactor. In this investigation, calcination of limestone particles was carried out at three levels of pressure: 0.1 MPa, 0.5 MPa, and 1.0 MPa. After calcination, the capture performance of the calcined sorbent was tested at atmospheric pressure. As expected, the results indicate that the carbonation conversion of calcined sorbent decreases as the pressure is increased during calcination. Pressurised calcination requires higher temperatures and causes an increase in sorbent sintering, albeit that it would have the advantage of reducing equipment size as well as the compression energy necessary for CO2transport and storage, and an analysis has been provided to give an assessment of the potential benefits associated with such an option using process software.EPSR

Biomaterials Evaluation: Conceptual Refinements and Practical Reforms

Regarding the widespread and ever-increasing applications of biomaterials in different medical fields, their accurate assessment is of great importance. Hence the safety and efficacy of biomaterials is confirmed only through the evaluation process, the way it is done has direct effects on public health. Although every biomaterial undergoes rigorous premarket evaluation, the regulatory agencies receive a considerable number of complications and adverse event reports annually. The main factors that challenge the process of biomaterials evaluation are dissimilar regulations, asynchrony of biomaterials evaluation and biomaterials development, inherent biases of postmarketing data, and cost and timing issues. Several pieces of evidence indicate that current medical device regulations need to be improved so that they can be used more effectively in the evaluation of biomaterials. This article provides suggested conceptual refinements and practical reforms to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the existing regulations. The main focus of the article is on strategies for evaluating biomaterials in US, and then in EU

Resetting the Optimizer in Deep RL: An Empirical Study

We focus on the task of approximating the optimal value function in deep reinforcement learning. This iterative process is comprised of solving a sequence of optimization problems where the loss function changes per iteration. The common approach to solving this sequence of problems is to employ modern variants of the stochastic gradient descent algorithm such as Adam. These optimizers maintain their own internal parameters such as estimates of the first-order and the second-order moments of the gradient, and update them over time. Therefore, information obtained in previous iterations is used to solve the optimization problem in the current iteration. We demonstrate that this can contaminate the moment estimates because the optimization landscape can change arbitrarily from one iteration to the next one. To hedge against this negative effect, a simple idea is to reset the internal parameters of the optimizer when starting a new iteration. We empirically investigate this resetting idea by employing various optimizers in conjunction with the Rainbow algorithm. We demonstrate that this simple modification significantly improves the performance of deep RL on the Atari benchmark.Comment: Accepted at Thirty-seventh Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023

Un modelo de marketing con causa (cause-related) para el sistema bancario de Irán: un enfoque fenomenológico

Despite almost four decades of introducing the Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) concept into business and marketing literature, there is still no general agreement as to the definition, content, and scope of marketing, in particular, in countries such as Iran. In this regard, while this article will examine and present the conceptual framework of this issue during the period of creation, it aims to achieve a conceptual model for Cause-Related Marketing in the banking system of Iran. For this reason, the concept of Cause-Related Marketing is analyzed in terms of its origin and evolution, content and scope, and various well-known definitions. The first part reviews the subject literature and integrates the findings of previous researchers. The second section was done by the phenomenological method and through a detailed interview with banking system experts. The study population was senior managers of Keshavarzi Bank, and the strategy of sampling was non-random, available, and utilized theoretical sampling methods. In this regard, 16 senior managers of the Agricultural Bank of Iran were selected as the statistical sample for data collection. Qualitative data were analyzed using open and axial coding using the MaxQDA12pro software. Findings separate the concept of Cause-Related Marketing from other related or similar terms and describe various types of Cause-Related Marketing campaigns. Finally, the phenomenological method was used to examine and provide the dimensions and components of Cause-Related Marketing in the banking system of Iran. Analyzing the results of the interviews shows that Cause-Related Marketing in the banking system has direct (management, economic, and characteristics of the causal activities) and indirect (social, scientific, cultural, religious, and geographical components) dimensions.A pesar de que el concepto de marketing con causa (Cause-Related Marketing) lleva cuatro décadas cursando en la literatura académica de los negocios y del marketing, aún no hay un acuerdo general respecto a la definición, el contenido y el alcance del marketing, particularmente en países como Irán. A este respecto, aunque este artículo examinará y presentará el marco conceptual de esta temática durante su periodo de desarroll inicial, lo que pretende es obtener un modelo conceptual para el marketing con causa en el sistema bancario de Irán. De esta manera, el concepto de marketing con causa será analizado respecto a su origen, evolución, contenido y alcance, así como respecto a varias definiciones bien conocidas. En la primera parte se hace una reseña de la literatura pertinente sobre el tema y se integran los hallazgos de los investigadores precedentes. La segunda sección se elaboró mediante el método fenomenológico y entrevistas detalladas con varios expertos en el sistema bancario. La población de este estudio la constituyen gerentes senior del Banco Keshavarzi y la estrategia de muestro fue no aleatoria, por conveniencia, en la que se utilizaron métodos de muestreo teóricos. A este respecto fueron seleccionados 16 gerentes senior del Banco Agrícola de Irán como muestra estadística para la recolección de datos. Los datos cualitativos se analizaron mediante el software MaxQDA12pro usando codificación abierta y axial. En los resultados se hace una separación del concepto de marketing con causa de otros términos similares o relacionados, y se hace una descripción de varios tipos de campañas de marketing con causa. Finalmente, se usó el método fenomenológico para proveer y asignar las dimensiones y componentes del marketing con causa en el sistema bancario de Irán. El análisis de los resultados de las entrevistas muestra que el marketing con causa en el sistema bancario tiene dimensiones directas (en la dirección, en la economía y en las características de las actividades causales) e indirectas (componentes sociales, científicos, culturales, religiosos y geográficos)

Religious Terrorism

This article explores religious terrorism, a concept that has received a lot of attention from academics and the international community. It briefly looks at the definitions of terrorism and religious terrorism, in order to give clarity to the rest of the article. The article presents two sides of a debate. One side is that religious terrorism is in fact a unique and separate phenomenon. The other side is that “religious terrorism” is not fundamentally different from terrorism, and rather is a misrepresentative term made up by academics in the West in order to further their political agenda... The authors argue that even if some people to justify violent acts use religion, nevertheless the basic tenets of most religions are peace and tolerance. Religion has the potential to prevent, mediate, and resolve conflict, as well as heal and reconcile after violence has occurred. In order to counter terrorism, religious leaders need to work tirelessly around the world to uphold the peaceful aspects of religion