Studying the Relationship between Lack of Job Promotion and Career Plateau of Staff: A Case Study in Well Being Office of Kerman

Behavior of staff in an office or organization can be affected by their job attitudes. Therefore, it is necessary that managers be aware of them. The present research aims to study the effect of lack of job promotion of well-being staff of Kerman on their job motivations. The method used in this research is descriptive survey. Statistical population of the research is 80 persons including official, contractual staff in well-being of Kerman city. The present research is correlative and data and information were gathered by field researches (questionnaire) with complete census sampling. Results show that staff under the consideration are exposed to lack of job motivation due to their type of job so that managers require identifying this issue accurately. Also, results indicated that if staff have positive attitudes towards their jobs, they will expose to fewer plateaus. As a result, managers of well-being organization should try to increases positive attitudes of the staff

Maintenance Optimization and Inspection Planning of Wind Energy Assets: Models, Methods and Strategies

Designing cost-effective inspection and maintenance programmes for wind energy farms is a complex task involving a high degree of uncertainty due to diversity of assets and their corresponding damage mechanisms and failure modes, weather-dependent transport conditions, unpredictable spare parts demand, insufficient space or poor accessibility for maintenance and repair, limited availability of resources in terms of equipment and skilled manpower, etc. In recent years, maintenance optimization has attracted the attention of many researchers and practitioners from various sectors of the wind energy industry, including manufacturers, component suppliers, maintenance contractors and others. In this paper, we propose a conceptual classification framework for the available literature on maintenance policy optimization and inspection planning of wind energy systems and structures (turbines, foundations, power cables and electrical substations). The developed framework addresses a wide range of theoretical and practical issues, including the models, methods, and the strategies employed to optimise maintenance decisions and inspection procedures in wind farms. The literature published to date on the subject of this article is critically reviewed and several research gaps are identified. Moreover, the available studies are systematically classified using different criteria and some research directions of potential interest to operational researchers are highlighted

Investigation on grain refinement mechanism of Ni-based coating with LaAlO3 by first-principles

In this work, the adhesion energy, interfacial energy, interface bonding and interface magnetism of LaAlO3/Ni interface were calculated by the first-principles method. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of LaAlO3 as the heterogeneous nucleus of Ni grains was also analyzed. The results show that the Wad of the AlO2-O-OT interface is the largest, which is 3.58 J/m2. Those of the LaO-OT interface and AlO2-Al-OT interface are followed. While that of the LaO-MT interface is the smallest. Interface magnetism analysis shows that the AlO2-terminated interface enhances the polarization of Ni atom, and the LaO-OT interface has a little influence on the polarization of Ni atom, while the LaO-MT interface reduces the polarization of Ni atom. The LaO-terminated interface is more stable than the AlO2-terminated interface when ΔμAl is low. While the AlO2-terminated interface becomes more stable when ΔμAl is high. When ΔμAl is less than − 14.15 eV and − 11.74 eV, the interfacial energy of the LaO-MT interface and LaO-OT interface is smaller than the liquid/solid interfacial energy of Ni (σNi(l)/Ni(s)). When ΔμAl is more than − 9.09 eV and − 6.63 eV, the interfacial energy of the AlO2-O-OT and AlO2-Al-OT interfaces is smaller than σNi(l)/Ni(s). Therefore, LaAlO3 can be the heterogeneous nucleus of Ni and refine Ni grains

Economic-Environmental Analysis of Combined Heat and Power-Based Reconfigurable Microgrid Integrated with Multiple Energy Storage and Demand Response Program

Microgrids (MGs) are solutions to integrate high shares of variable renewable energy which can contribute to more economical and environmental benefits, as well as improving the energy supply efficiency. One significant potential of MGs is an expanded opportunity to use the waste heating energy from the conversion of the primary fuel (such as natural gas) to generate electricity. The use of waste heat in combined heat and power (CHP)-based MG is more efficient to meet local load and decrease the emission pollution. Hence, this paper elaborates on optimal multi-objective scheduling of CHP-based MG coupled with compressed air energy storage (CAES), renewable energy, thermal energy storage (TES), and demand response programs through shiftable loads, which considers a reconfiguration capability. The embedded CAES, in addition to the charging/discharging scheme, can operate in a simple cycling mode and serve as a generation resource to supply local load in an emergency condition. The daily reconfiguration of MG will introduce a new generation of MG named reconfigurable microgrid (RMG) that offers more flexibility and enhances system reliability. The RMG is coupled with TES to facilitate the integration of the CHP unit that enables the operator to participate in the thermal market, in addition to the power market. The main intents of the proposed multi-objective problem are to minimize the operation cost along with a reduction in carbon emission. The epsilon-constraint technique is used to solve the multi-objective problem while fuzzy decision making is implemented to select an optimal solution among all the Pareto solutions. The electricity prices and wind power generation variation are captured as random variables in the model and the scenario-based stochastic approach is used to handle them. Simulation results prove that the simultaneous integration of multiple technologies in CHP-based RMG decreases the operation cost and emission up to 3% and 10.28%, respectively

A scattering and repulsive swarm intelligence algorithm for solving global optimization problems

The firefly algorithm (FA), as a metaheuristic search method, is useful for solving diverse optimization problems. However, it is challenging to use FA in tackling high dimensional optimization problems, and the random movement of FA has a high likelihood to be trapped in local optima. In this research, we propose three improved algorithms, i.e., Repulsive Firefly Algorithm (RFA), Scattering Repulsive Firefly Algorithm (SRFA), and Enhanced SRFA (ESRFA), to mitigate the premature convergence problem of the original FA model. RFA adopts a repulsive force strategy to accelerate fireflies (i.e. solutions) to move away from unpromising search regions, in order to reach global optimality in fewer iterations. SRFA employs a scattering mechanism along with the repulsive force strategy to divert weak neighbouring solutions to new search regions, in order to increase global exploration. Motivated by the survival tactics of hawk-moths, ESRFA incorporates a hovering-driven attractiveness operation, an exploration-driven evading mechanism, and a learning scheme based on the historical best experience in the neighbourhood to further enhance SRFA. Standard and CEC2014 benchmark optimization functions are used for evaluation of the proposed FA-based models. The empirical results indicate that ESRFA, SRFA and RFA significantly outperform the original FA model, a number of state-of-the-art FA variants, and other swarm-based algorithms, which include Simulated Annealing, Cuckoo Search, Particle Swarm, Bat Swarm, Dragonfly, and Ant-Lion Optimization, in diverse challenging benchmark functions

Hyponatremia revisited: Translating physiology to practice

The complexity of hyponatremia as a clinical problem is likely caused by the opposite scenarios that accompany this electrolyte disorder regarding pathophysiology (depletional versus dilutional hyponatremia, high versus low vasopressin levels) and therapy (rapid correction to treat cerebral edema versus slow correction to prevent osmotic demyelination, fluid restriction versus fluid resuscitation). For a balanced differentiation between these opposites, an understanding of the pathophysiology of hyponatremia is required. Therefore, in this review an attempt is made to translate the physiology of water balance regulation to strategies that improve the clinical management of hyponatremia. A physiology-based approach to the patient with hyponatremia is presented, first addressing the possibility of acute hyponatremia, and then asking if and if so why vasopressin is secreted non-osmotically. Additional diagnostic recommendations are not to rely too heavily of the assessment of the extracellular fluid volume, to regard the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis as a diagnosis of exclusion, and to rationally investigate the pathophysiology of hyponatremia rather than to rely on isolated laboratory values with arbitrary cutoff values. The features of the major hyponatremic disorders are discussed, including diuretic-induced hyponatremia, adrenal and pituitary insufficiency, the syndrome of inappropriate antidiuresis, cerebral salt wasting, and exercise-associated hyponatremia. The treatment of hyponatremia is reviewed from simple saline solutions to the recently introduced vasopressin receptor antagonists, including their promises and limitations. Given the persistently high rates of hospital-acquired hyponatremia, the importance of improving the management of hyponatremia seems both necessary and achievable. Copyrigh

Intelligent Technique for Seamless Vertical Handover in Vehicular Networks

Seamless mobility is a challenging issue in the area of research of vehicular networks that are supportive of various applications dealing with the intelligent transportation system (ITS). The conventional mobility management plans for the Internet and the mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is unable to address the needs of the vehicular network and there is severe performance degradation because of the vehicular networks’ unique characters such as high mobility. Thus, vehicular networks require seamless mobility designs that especially developed for them. This research provides an intelligent algorithm in providing seamless mobility using the media independent handover, MIH (IEEE 802.21), over heterogeneous networks with different access technologies such as Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi), as well as the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) for improving the quality of service (QoS) of the mobile services in the vehicular networks. The proposed algorithm is a hybrid model which merges the biogeography-based optimization or BBO with the Markov chain. The findings of this research show that our method within the given scenario can meet the requirements of the application as well as the preferences of the users