Numerical solutions of a steady 2-D incompressible flow in a rectangular domain with wall slip boundary conditions using the finite volume method

In this study, a finite volume method (FVM) is suitably used for solving the problem of a fully coupled fluid flow in a rectangular domain with slip boundary conditions. Numerical solutions for the flow variables, viz. velocity, and pressure have been computed. The FVM, with an upwind scheme, has been implemented to discretize the governing equations of the present problem. The well known SIMPLE algorithm is employed for pressure-velocity coupling. This was executed with the aid of a computer program developed and run in a C-compiler. Computations have been performed for unknown variables with Reynolds numbers (Re) = 50, 100, 250, 500, 750 and 1000. The behavior of steady-state solutions of velocity and pressure of the fluid along horizontal and vertical through geometric center of the rectangular domain have been illustrated. We observed that, with the increase of the Reynolds number, the absolute value of velocity components decreases whereas the pressure value increases

Structural Design and Testing of Mass Timber Concrete Composite Floor Solutions with Acoustic Interlayers

Timber-concrete composite (TCC) solutions originated in the early twentieth century. There has been a renewed interest in TCC solutions in modern mass timber buildings, especially for floor systems. However due to lack of data, design standards, and code acceptance, TCC solutions require that new mass timber solutions be tested, and design methods validated or adjusted based on new findings. This thesis characterizes the interface shear and flexural properties of different TCC solutions through an experimental testing program that combined mass-ply panels (MPP), reinforced concrete topping, and various interface layers and connection systems to create novel composite floor systems. Fifteen TCC solutions are presented. These consist of 102 mm thick MPP, 75 mm thick reinforced concrete topping, two interface shear connection solutions (screws and steel mesh), and three levels of acoustic insulation layer (no insulation, 5mm layer, 19mm layer). Structural tests performed included: (1) Pushout tests, (2) Comparative one-way bending tests, and (3) Orthotropic stiffness tests. Within the experimental program design, pushout and comparative one-way bending test results indicate that higher stiffness and strength can be achieved with interface shear solutions that included steel mesh versus those that included screws. In addition, inclusion of insulation layers results in statistically significant reduction of strength and stiffness in floor solutions that include screws, while increased stiffness and negligible reductions in strength were observed in solutions that include the steel mesh

A Review of the Most Significant Components of the Evaluation and Management of Primary Urethral Carcinoma

Primary urethral carcinoma (PUC) is a rare malignancy with limited treatment options. The purpose of this overview is to outline current strategies for this patient setting. Most of the current literature contains retrospective studies with small sample sizes and non-intuitive treatment instructions. The difficulty in treating this disease begins with diagnosis. Proximal (posterior) tumors may be missed until late in the disease because they are difficult to palpate during the physical examination. Early-stage distant tumors may also be misdiagnosed as infections, delaying treatment and potentially worsening prognosis. Our patient was diagnosed as having primary urethral cancer in the First Clinical Hospital of Yichang by cystoscopy and biopsy. Due to her advanced age, poor health and economic conditions, she refused to undergo radical surgery. Since there is no clear guideline for the treatment course of primary urethral cancer clinically, different hospitals have different surgical methods and postoperative concomitant treatments, resulting in different prognosis effects. Additional studies with standardized treatment approaches for patients, preferably in a randomized prospective controlled setting, are needed to advance evidence-based treatment approaches

PAPR REDUCTION IN ACO-OFDM FOR VISIBLE LIGHT COMMUNICATION SYSTEM

Visible Light Communication (VLC) is gaining popularity in optical wireless. In conventional OFDM, bi-polar signals having both positive and negative values are considered. However, in optical OFDM uni-polar signals, which have only positive values, are used. Therefore, suitable changes have to be done in conventional OFDM to make it compatible with O-OFDM. These modifications lead to the generation of asymmetrically clipped optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (ACO-OFDM) technology. In ACO-OFDM systems Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) is a detrimental effect and should be suppressed. In ACO-OFDM, the estimation of probability density function (pdf) is not straightforward; therefore, a very limited literature is available. In this paper, an attempt is made to estimate pdf and Complimentary Cumulative Distribution Function (CCDF) expression for an ACO-OFDM with intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD), and its validity is checked by using simulation results. For ACO-OFDM scheme PAPR reduction methodology is used by applying various clipping strategies along with non-linear µ-law companding scheme. The results presented in the paper are obtained through computer simulation using MATLAB software. As clipping increases Bit Error Rate (BER), therefore, at various clipping mechanism BER are also obtained. It has been found, that by choosing suitable clipping along with non-linear companding scheme, PAPR can be reduced significantly while maintaining reasonable good BER performance. It is found, that with the proposed technique, PAPR is reduced by 76.10% as compared to raw ACO-OFDM

The 2022 SIM IT Issues and Trends Study

The Society for Information Management’s 42nd Annual IT Issues and Trends Study received responses from 796 IT executives, including 334 CIOs and 540 unique organizations. The average revenue of participating organizations was $6.1 billion (median$400 million). IT spending as a percentage of revenue was 5.9%, up slightly from 2021 but close to the 10-year average of 5.7%. However, 74.6% of organizations reported increasing IT headcount, a 10-year high and up from 63.6% in 2021. Similarly, 94.8% reported increases in average IT salaries. The top five IT management issues for organizations in 2022 were Cybersecurity, Alignment, Analytics, Compliance and Digital Transformation; the top five largest IT investments were Analytics, Cybersecurity, Cloud, Application Development and ERP; while the five most difficult to find soft skills were Critical Thinking, Teamwork, Business Acumen, Leadership and Problem Solving. The most common criteria for assessing CIO performance were Value of IT to the Business, Internal Customer Satisfaction, Cybersecurity, Strategic Contribution of IT and IT Availability. The average tenure of CIOs was 5.9 years (median 4 years) with 48% reporting to the CEO. CIOs continue to come from outside organizations at record levels (82%), and 24.6 came from prior non-IT positions

A Hybrid Machine Learning Technique For Feature Optimization In Object-Based Classification of Debris-Covered Glaciers

Object-based features like spectral, topographic, and textural are supportive to determine debris-covered glacier classes. The original feature space includes relevant and irrelevant features. The inclusion of all these features increases the complexity and renders the classifier’s performance. Therefore, feature space optimization is requisite for the classification process. Previous studies have shown a rigorous exercise in manually selecting the best combination of features to define the target class and proven to be a time consuming task. The present study proposed a hybrid feature selection technique to automate the selection of the best suitable features. This study aimed to reduce the classifier’s complexity and enhance the performance of the classification model. Relief-F and Pearson Correlation filter-based feature selection methods ranked features according to the relevance and filtered out irrelevant or less important features based on the defined condition. Later, the hybrid model selected the common features to get an optimal feature set. The proposed hybrid model was tested on Landsat 8 images of debris-covered glaciers in Central Karakoram Range and validated with present glacier inventories. The results showed that the classification accuracy of the proposed hybrid feature selection model with a Decision Tree classifier is 99.82%, which is better than the classification results obtained using other mapping techniques. In addition, the hybrid feature selection technique has sped up the process of classification by reducing the number of features by 77% without compromising the classification accuracy