A Comparative Study of Derrida's Binary Opposition in Escher's Day and Night

Resumen: Este estudio ha comparado la teoría de la oposición binaria de Derrida en “Dia y Noche” de Maurits Escher. Las oposiciones binarias son los principios dominantes del mundo material. Sin lugar a dudas, las oposiciones no pueden dejar de reflejarse en el arte humano, especialmente en las ilustraciones visuales. Para el estudio comparativo de la teoría de Derrida con las artes visuales, fue necesario elegir un indicador de trabajo artístico. Así, la pintura "Día y noche" fue seleccionada por Escher como la obra artística más opuesta de la época contemporánea, que muestra las funciones artísticas de la teoría en sintonía con las obras artísticas visuales. Esto se debe a que la forma y el contenido de este trabajo tienen abundantes oposiciones. Los resultados de este estudio, que se realiza mediante método comparativo y analítico, muestran que el número de oposiciones binarias en esta Pintura llega a 7 ítems e incluye contenido y oposición binaria narrativa y se puede ajustar con la teoría de Derrida en términos de generalización a funciones artísticas.Abstract: This article aimed at conducting a comparative study of Derrida’s binary oppositions theory in Maurits Escher’s Day and Night painting, indicating the applicability of the functions of the theory to the visual artistic works. Binary oppositions are among the dominant principles of the material world. Undoubtedly, such oppositions cannot be without their reflections in human art, especially visual illustrations. Sometimes, art reflects these oppositions and contradictions as they are and depicts them in the form of symbols and signs. For the sake of the comparative study of Derrida’s theory with visual arts, it was necessary to choose a seminal artistic work. Hence, the Day and Night painting by Escher was selected as the most opposing artistic work of the contemporary times. This is because the title, form, and content of this work have plenty of oppositions. The results of this study, conducted with the aid of comparative and analytical methods, show that the number of binary oppositions in this Painting reaches to 7 items. In terms of generalization to artistic functions, this includes form and performance (content and validity) binary oppositions, which are applicable to Derrida’s theory

Thermodynamic and environmental analysis of a fuel cell power system used in a building in ahvaz

Herein, a fuel cell power system that works in CHP mode has been considered to provide electrical, heating, cooling and domestic hot water loads of buildings. The buildings tolerate hot summers and mild winters during their operation life. In previous research, the PEM fuel cell system was designed and number of fuel cell stacks to provide the required energy of the building was estimated. As a complementary investigation, the thermodynamic and environmental analysis of the mentioned system has been conducted in this research. Results have shown that for a 12 fuel cell stacks at a nominal capacity of 8.5 kW, the mass production of monoxide carbon, monoxide nitrogen and dioxide carbon are equal to 1272.621 (kg/year), 1609.056 (kg/year) and 26107.23 (kg/year), respectively. The mass production values are acceptable since it is within limitation ranges mentioned by many environmental protocols

A Modified Super-Efficiency in the Range Directional Model

The range directional model (RDM) relaxes the assumption of non-negativity of inputs and outputs in the conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) with the aim of evaluating the efficiency of a decision-making unit (DMU) when some data are negative. Although the concept of super-efficiency in the RDM contributes to enhancing discriminatory power, the formulated model may lead to the infeasibility problem for some efficient DMUs. In this paper, we modify the super-efficiency RDM (SRDM) model to overcome the infeasibility problem occurring in such cases. Our method leads to a complete ranking of the DMUs with negative data for yielding valuable insights that aid decision makers to better understand the findings from a performance evaluation process. The contribution of this paper is fivefold: (1) we detect the source of infeasibility problems of SRDM in the presence of negative data, (2) the proposed model in this study yields the SRDM measures regardless of feasibility or infeasibility of the model, (3) when feasibility occurs, the modified SRDM model results in the scores that are the same as the original model, (4) we differentiate the efficient units to improve discriminatory power in SRDM, and (5) we provide two numerical examples to elucidate the details of the proposed method

Energy analysis of a CHP fuel cell system to meet energy loads of a residential building

This study deals with the energy analysis of a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell power system including burner, steam reformer, heat exchanger and water heater. This system has been considered to meet the electrical, heating, cooling and domestic hot water loads of a residential building located in Ahvaz. Natural gas is fuel of the system and system works in CHP mode. The energy requirements of residential building and the number of fuel cell stacks to meet them have been estimated. The method involved energy analysis and entropy generation through the months of the year. Results show that all the energy needs of the building can be met with 12 fuel cell stacks at a nominal capacity of 8.5 kW. Energy analysis of the CHP system shows that the increase in the ambient air temperature from 1°C to 40°C, will have an increase of entropy generation by 5.73. Maximum entropy generates for 15 hour in 15th of June and 15th of July is estimated to amount at 12624 (kW/K). Entropy generation of this system through out a year is estimated to amount to 1004.54 GJ/k.year. © 2006-2014 Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN)

Selection of industrial robots using the Polygons area method

Selection of robots from the several proposed alternatives is a very important and tedious task. Decision makers are not limited to one method and several methods have been proposed for solving this problem. This study presents Polygons Area Method (PAM) as a multi attribute decision making method for robot selection problem. In this method, the maximum polygons area obtained from the attributes of an alternative robot on the radar chart is introduced as a decision-making criterion. The results of this method are compared with other typical multiple attribute decision-making methods (SAW, WPM, TOPSIS, and VIKOR) by giving two examples. To find similarity in ranking given by different methods, Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients are obtained for different pairs of MADM methods. It was observed that the introduced method is in good agreement with other well-known MADM methods in the robot selection problem

Smart Technologies and Green Innovation in the Wastewater Treatment Industry: The Mediating Role of Corporate Sustainability and Sustainability Strategies

One of the key areas addressed by the sustainable development discourse is the role of sustainability as a driver of green innovation. The aim of this study was to study the mediating role of company sustainability and sustainability strategies in the relationship between smart technologies and green innovation in companies constructing wastewater treatment plants in the Iran. This research is applicable in terms of purpose and descriptivesurvey in terms of method. The statistical population of the study consists of senior managers of companies designing, constructing and operating municipal wastewater treatment plants, 250 of which were selected using the available sampling method. Findings indicate that intelligent technologies have a significant effect on firm stability and sustainability strategies, and according to the resulting path coefficients with values ​​of 0.74 and 0.31, this relationship is positive and directional. In addition, the results indicate that the sustainability strategy has a significant effect on the stability of the company and the path coefficient with a value of 0.25, indicates a positive and directional relationship. In addition, according to the results of the research, the stability of the company has a significant effect on green innovation and according to the path coefficient with a value of 0.41, this relationship is positive and directional. In addition, the results show that smart technologies have a positive and significant effect on green innovation with the mediating role of company sustainability and the indirect impact of smart technologies on green innovation in this direction is equal to 0.30. Research shows that smart technologies have a positive and significant effect on company sustainability with the mediating role of company sustainability strategy and the rate of indirect impact of smart technologies on company sustainability in this direction is equal to 0.08. In addition, according to the research results, the company's sustainability strategy has a significant effect on green innovation with the mediating role of company sustainability and the indirect impact of the sustainability strategy on green innovation in this direction is equal to 0.10

A Numercial Comparison of Single-phase Forced Convective Heat Transfer Between Round Tube and Round Microchannel Heat Exchangers

Abstract: Three dimensional simulations of the single-phase laminar flow and forced convective heat transfer of water in round tube and round microchannel heat exchangers were investigated numerically. This numerical method was developed to measure heat transfer parameters of round tube and round microchannel tube geometries. Then, similarities and differences were compared between different geometries. The geometries and operating conditions of those indicated heat exchangers were created using a finite volume-based computational fluid dynamics technique. In this article, at each Z-location variation of dimensionless local temperature, non-dimensional local heat flux variation and dimensionless local Nusselt number distribution along the tube length were compared between round tube and round microchannel heat exchangers. Consequently, averaged computational Nusselt number was obtained for those indicated models and then validation study was performed for round tube counter flow type heat exchanger model. Finally, all of these numerical results for both kind of geometries in counter flow heat exchangers were discussed in details

Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age.

The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset - with data collected between 2020 and 2022 - to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Body appreciation around the world: Measurement invariance of the Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age

Abstract The Body Appreciation Scale-2 (BAS-2) is a widely used measure of a core facet of the positive body image construct. However, extant research concerning measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across a large number of nations remains limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset – with data collected between 2020 and 2022 – to assess measurement invariance of the BAS-2 across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis indicated that full scalar invariance was upheld across all nations, languages, gender identities, and age groups, suggesting that the unidimensional BAS-2 model has widespread applicability. There were large differences across nations and languages in latent body appreciation, while differences across gender identities and age groups were negligible-to-small. Additionally, greater body appreciation was significantly associated with higher life satisfaction, being single (versus being married or in a committed relationship), and greater rurality (versus urbanicity). Across a subset of nations where nation-level data were available, greater body appreciation was also significantly associated with greater cultural distance from the United States and greater relative income inequality. These findings suggest that the BAS-2 likely captures a near-universal conceptualisation of the body appreciation construct, which should facilitate further cross-cultural research