Time Orientation and Mental Accounting: Examining Serial Mediation Effects af Financial Literacy and Impulsivity

With a wide variety of complex financial assets and securities available in the market, individuals often struggle with their financial planning due to a lack of financial literacy, high impulsivity, and short-term time orientation, hampering their financial satisfaction. The current study examines the yet unexplored indirect effect of investors\u27 time orientations on mental accounting through financial literacy and impulsivity. We conducted a cross-sectional survey and collected 162 active investors’ responses via structured questionnaires distributed in both online and offline portals across India to gauge their financial literacy, time orientation, impulsivity, and mental accounting. We used Smart PLS-4 software along with structural equation modeling to test the direct and indirect effects of time orientation on mental accounting. Findings support the statistical significance of the indirect effect of time orientation on mental accounting through financial literacy and impulsivity. In other words, the way an individual perceives time has an impact on the categorization of incomes and expenses. Moreover, impulsiveness and financial literacy play a key role in between. The findings of this study contribute to the discipline by advancing a model for predicting investors’ mental accounting, as well as partially answering the question of why, if mental accounting is so important, many individuals do not use it for their investment decisions. This study’s findings offer suggestions on how investors can be influenced to use this model. Moreover, this study suggests how financial therapy and counseling can play a critical role in improving the financial health and well-being of individuals

Development and investigation of a non-catalytic self-aspirating meso-scale premixed burner integrated thermoelectric power generator

Portable electrical power generation using hydrocarbons presents significant potential owing to their higher power densities and negative environmental factors associated with chemical cell batteries. Small scale combustors have been widely developed and tested for power generation purposes, employing thermoelectrics and thermo-photovoltaic conversion of combustion heat into electricity. This experimental study is concerned with development and investigation of a novel non-catalytic mesoscale self-aspirating premixed burner with integrated thermoelectric generator which can be used in remote places to generate electricity for a continuous period of one month. Flame stabilisation has been one of the main issues in small scale combustion systems due to higher surface to volume ratio associated with small size of the combustor. Previous research has shown that catalytic combustion is one way of improving flame stabilisation, however employing a catalyst into the system increases the manufacturing cost which can be a significant downside. This research work studies flame stabilisation mechanisms in meso-scale burner which mainly focuses on backward facing step and secondary air addition into the combustion chamber. The first phase of the research was involved development of the burner which included optimisation of the design to achieve a stable enclosed premixed flame as per the design and operational requirements. The second phase of the research focused on the integration of the burner with thermoelectric power generators. This involved investigation of various configurations to optimise the electrical power output when limited amount of heat is available. The relationship between ambient temperature and thermoelectric power generation using an environmentally controlled chamber has also been presented in this experimental study

Development of a premixed burner integrated thermoelectric power generator for insect control

Electrical power generation using hydrocarbons presents a huge potential owing to their higher power densities and environmental factors associated with lithium ion batteries. Small scale combustors have been widely developed and tested for power generation purpose employing Thermoelectrics and Thermophotovoltaic conversion of combustion heat into electricity. This thesis is concerned with development and investigation of a novel non-catalytic meso scale self-aspirating premixed burner integrated thermoelectric generator for a CO2 Generator device having its application in the insect control industry. Flame stabilisation has been one of the main issues in small scale combustion systems due to higher surface to volume ratio associated with small size of the combustor. Previous research has shown that catalytic combustion is one way of improving flame stabilisation, however employing a catalyst into the system increases the manufacturing cost which can be a significant downside. This research work studies flame stabilisation mechanisms in meso-scale burner which mainly focuses on Backward Facing Step or Sudden Expansion Step and secondary air addition into the combustion chamber. A 250 W premixed burner was developed which was classified as a meso scale burner whose operating parameters were in a range of micro-combustors whereas the size was comparatively bigger due to its integration with standard size thermoelectric modules. The first phase of the research was concerned with development of the burner which included optimisation of the design to achieve a stable enclosed premixed flame as per the design and operational requirements. It was found that flame blowoff can be prevented by addition of secondary air into the combustion chamber downstream of the step. The second phase of the research focused on the integration of the burner with thermoelectric power generators. This involved investigation of various configurations to optimise the electrical power output. The burner integrated thermoelectric unit was then tested in the actual field to validate the concept of integrating combustion and thermoelectrics for small scale power generation applications. The final phase of the research involved a study on the effect of secondary air addition on flame stabilisation in burners employing backward facing step. The minimum secondary air requirement for burner with different step heights was determined. The addition of secondary air cross-stream into the combustion chamber creates stable recirculation zone which reduces the local stream velocity and hence prevents flame blowoff

Evaluation of Thermoelectric Generators by I-V Curves

A recent theoretical study proposes a new way to evaluate thermoelectric devices by measuring two I–V curves—one obtained under a constant temperature difference and the other obtained for a constant thermal input. We report an experimental demonstration of the feasibility of this novel technique. A measurement system was designed and constructed, which enables both types of I–V curves to be obtained automatically. The effective ZT values of a thermoelectric module were determined using this system and compared with those measured by an impedance spectroscopy technique. The results confirm the validity of the proposed technique. In addition, the capability of measuring ZT under a large temperature difference was also investigated. The results show that the ZTs obtained for a large temperature difference are significantly smaller than those for a small temperature difference, providing insights into the design and operation of thermoelectric modules in realistic applications.The work is financially supported by the European Commission Research Fund for Coal and Steel programme under the Therelexpro project (RPS-PR-12068) and Globasol project (309194)

NFDLM: A Lightweight Network Flow based Deep Learning Model for DDoS Attack Detection in IoT Domains

In the recent years, Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on Internet of Things (IoT) devices have become one of the prime concerns to Internet users around the world. One of the sources of the attacks on IoT ecosystems are botnets. Intruders force IoT devices to become unavailable for its legitimate users by sending large number of messages within a short interval. This study proposes NFDLM, a lightweight and optimised Artificial Neural Network (ANN) based Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) attack detection framework with mutual correlation as feature selection method which produces a superior result when compared with Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) and simple ANN. Overall, the detection performance achieves approximately 99\% accuracy for the detection of attacks from botnets. In this work, we have designed and compared four different models where two are based on ANN and the other two are based on LSTM to detect the attack types of DDoS.Comment: 7 page

Accuracy of smartphone based electrocardiogram for the detection of rhythm abnormalities in limb lead: a cross sectional study, non-randomised, single blinded and single-center study

Background: For the identification of arrhythmia and abnormal instances, researchers are examining the reliability of the interpretation offered by smartphone-based portable ECG monitors. The indicator of an unclear alteration in the electrical activity of the heart is a cardiac abnormality. As a result, its early and accurate identification can avoid myocardial infarction and even sudden cardiac death. Objectives of this study were to evaluate and validate the Spandan 12 lead ECG interpretation for accuracy in detection of the cardiac arrhythmias in comparison to the cardiologist diagnosis, and to evaluate the accuracy of the arrhythmia detection of Spandan ECG in comparison to the 12 lead ECG machine. Methods: This cross-sectional study, non-randomised, single blinded and single-center study was carried out at Shri Mahant Indresh Hospital (SMIH), Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India from 1st August 2022 to 31st January 2023. All patients (n=312) visiting the electrocardiogram (ECG) room at the department of cardiology of the SMIH, Dehradun with the prescription of ECG screening during the study period were included in the study were included in the study. Results: In total, 1528 patients with or without a history of cardiovascular disease were enrolled from outpatient and emergency departments of cardiology. A final total of 312 participants considered for accuracy of interpretation of cardiac arrhythmias detected by the standard 12 lead ECG and smartphone ECG in comparison to cardiologists’ diagnosis. Mean age (SD) was 53.90±14.52 years. The male gender (68.78%) showed the maximum frequency than female gender. True Positive cases derived from confusion matrix for 12 lead standard ECG and smartphone ECG in comparison to cardiologist diagnosis was 264 as compared to 273 from 12 lead gold standard. Sensitivity of smartphone Spandan ECG (81.23%) was comparable to gold standard 12 Lead ECG (81.49%). And, specificity, PPV and NPV of smartphone Spandan ECG was recorded to be better than gold standard 12 Lead ECG. Arrhythmia was detected correctly in 403 (70.8%) cases and 431 (61.86%) cases by smartphone ECG and 12 lead gold standards, respectively. Conclusions: Spandan ECG device scored a high accuracy and sensitivity and high specificity. The overall accuracy of smartphone ECG in detecting the rhythm abnormalities increase by 9%, the significance rises in accuracy of computer interpretation when compared to the cardiologist’s diagnosis