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Modelling and Optimization of Airport Security Screening System with AnyLogic Simulation: A Case of Dublin Airport
Get PDFAirports worldwide have undergone a significant transformation to provide a more efficient, secure, and enjoyable travel experience for passengers. The delays or inefficiency of aviation security checks not only reduces the effectiveness of airport security operations, but also leads to worthening of passengers’ experience and increases criminal and terrorist threats. This paper examines the issue of airport security system modelling with AnyLogic simulation to increase its efficiency, using Dublin Airport as a case study. The research aimed to identify the causes of queues in the airport security lanes and to develop recommendations for airport authority regarding optimal resources utilization at the security checkpoints. Various airport security systems were analyzed in the paper, followed with the airport’s epidemiological safety assessment through the correspondent optimization experiments in the simulation software AnyLogic. The research results indicate the necessity to implement a new strategy for improving the efficiency of the airport security procedures. It was found that the optimal security system for the case airport is Rapiscan 620XR. It can reduce the average passenger’s processing time at security checkpoint to 0.635 min. It was also determined that in case of the new security system usage the morning hours (6 am–1 pm) are the least congested with the resources utilization at 78%, while the system operates at full capacity during the afternoon and evening hours. In future research, it would be beneficial to evaluate alternative simulation tools and examine other scenarios to compare their outcomes with the results discussed in this paper
Pixelating to the Edge: Generative AI Art on Edge Devices
Get PDFGenerative AI is transforming the way people accomplish tasks, reshaping numerous industries and workflows. In this study, we focus on one of the most popular applications of generative AI: text-to-image generation, a technology that gained significant attention in 2021. Despite its popularity, even after three years, text-to-image generation remains less efficient and slower on edge devices like mobile phones compared to its web-based counterparts. This research investigates various model variations and analyzes the factors influencing inference speed in image generation. While Mobile Diffusion, though not yet commercially available, claims to achieve an impressive inference speed of 0.02 seconds, we explore whether architectural modifications and sampling techniques can further enhance performance without compromising image quality. Our findings indicate that adjustments to sampling operations, such as switching the scheduler from PNDMS to DDIM, resulted in a 6.57% increase in inference speed, albeit with a slight degradation in FID and CLIP scores. In contrast, architectural changes yielded significant improvements, achieving up to a 15.24% increase in speed while maintaining favorable results in FID and CLIP scores
Sustainable Digital Sovereignty? Environmental Impact of EU Tech Strategies
No full textThis chapter aims to examine the environmental impact of EU technological strategies, ultimately challenging the idea that the Union is concretely envisaging a really sustainable form of digital sovereignty, in particular, by neglecting the consequences of digital policies beyond its borders. We start by tracing the genealogy of the digitalisation and green strategy in the EU, explaining to what extent they are currently considered as two ‘twin’ policies (II). We then focus on EU technology strategies, analysing how digital sovereignty has recently become a guiding principle in the context of a broader EU quest for strategic autonomy from third countries. Despite not being univocally defined, we illustrate how digital sovereignty strategies concretely take a ‘centripetal’ or a ‘centrifugal’ approach (III). The core contribution of our chapter then lies in the analysis of the environmental impact of EU technological policies as oriented by the EU objective of achieving a status of digital sovereignty. We will identify the generation of a rebound effect as the symptom of a ‘digital insularity’ attitude, where the EU still conceives the digital and green transitions as two siloed policies in terms of effects. We will finally introduce the concept of ‘environmental sovereignism’ to denote the adoption of a ‘Europe first’ attitude in setting twin transition strategies, which de facto neglects the impact of EU policies beyond its borders (IV). The last section will conclude presenting the theoretical alternative of starting to pursue a more digitally ‘sober’ approach (V)
Exploring well-being and ill-being in education: disciplinary insights and curriculum perspectives
Get PDFRecent years have seen a significant increase in the explicit naming of
well-being in educational policy and practice. However, there is a
tendency for such naming to occur in a theoretical vacuum which
can lead to an ambiguous and ill-defined application, and runs the
risk of the construct being viewed purely as ‘happiness’ and
negates the space for individual vulnerabilities and experiences of
ill-being that are part of the human condition. In this paper we
consider some of the philosophical and psychological conceptualisations of well-being, with a specific emphasis on the interplay between well-being, happiness, and ill-being. The paper draws on specific curricular areas, physical education and arts education, to consider first how well-being is integrated in the areas, and second the potential of the subjects to address issues of ill-being. We argue for the need for a wider, nuanced application of well-being to education, perhaps drawing from Aristotle’s view of flourishing, that allows for a more authentic perspective on human
functioning that embraces ill-being and vulnerability rather than
the narrow pursuance of individual happiness
Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of District Heating Supply Pathways: Insights from Waste Heat and CHP Configurations
Get PDFDecarbonising heat is a critical challenge for achieving climate goals, as heating accounts for around 40 % of global energy demand and nearly 30 % of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. District heating (DH) systems provide a scalable, low-carbon alternative to decentralised heating; however, their Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), particularly when integrating renewable supply options, remains underexplored in the literature, especially for emerging markets such as Ireland. This study introduces a novel integrated LCA framework that captures both
embodied and operational carbon emissions of alternative DH supply configurations. The framework combines SimaPro for life cycle inventory with HOMER Pro for techno-economic modelling and includes sensitivity
analysis of critical parameters. Three scenarios were assessed: a waste-heat-fed DH system, a natural gas combined heat and power (CHP) system, and a biogas CHP system. The results show that the waste heat-fed system exhibits the highest embodied emissions (402,000 kg CO2eq) compared with 256,000 kg CO2eq for the biogas CHP. In terms of operation, the biogas CHP system achieves up to a 72.9 % reduction in annual GHG emissions relative to natural gas CHP. Over a 20-year lifetime, the biogas CHP achieves the lowest overall life cycle carbon
footprint per functional unit, compared with natural gas CHP. These findings highlight the value of integrating life cycle carbon assessment into DH system evaluation and provide practical insights for policy and infrastructure planning to accelerate the decarbonisation of heating
Rōmaji for romanisation and beyond: A non-phonemic adaptation of the Latin script in Japanese
Get PDFThe Latin script is closely associated with phonemic writing, characterised by the systematic use of monosegmental signs. While this applies to various writing systems, the paper discusses its applicability to rōmaji, the Latin script adapted for Japanese. Initially employed for romanising Japanese words, rōmaji has evolved to serve multiple functions, including abbreviations and loanword notation. A survey of rōmaji usage in the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese revealed that only about 16.04% of rōmaji instances were for romanisation. This result indicates that its phonemic role is limited. Further research is necessary to understand its current functions better
NGAT: A Node-Level Graph Attention Network for Long-Term Stock Prediction
No full textGraph representation learning methods have been widely
adopted in financial applications to enhance company representations
by leveraging inter-firm relationships. However, current approaches face
three key challenges: (1) The advantages of relational information are
obscured by limitations in downstream task designs; (2) Existing graph
models specifically designed for stock prediction often suffer from excessive complexity and poor generalization; (3) Experience-based construction of corporate relationship graphs lacks effective comparison of different graph structures. To address these limitations, we propose a longterm stock prediction task and develop a Node-level Graph Attention
Network (NGAT) specifically tailored for corporate relationship graphs.
Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate the limitations of existing graph comparison methods based on model downstream task performance. Experimental results across two datasets consistently demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed task and mode
Which gender provides more specific peer feedback? Gender and assessment training’s effects on peer feedback specificity and intrapersonal factors
No full textThis study investigated the effects of assessor gender (male vs. female), fictitious assessee gender (male vs. female), and assessment training (with vs. without) on peer feedback specificity (i.e. localisation and focus) and intrapersonal factors (i.e. trust in the self as an assessor and
discomfort). This study involved 240 undergraduate psychology students (nMen=120, nWomen=120), with half receiving assessment training and the other half receiving the task instructions. Participants were divided into eight subgroups based on training condition and their
self-reported gender to provide peer feedback to three writing samples (poor, average, excellent quality) by fictitious male or female peer assessees in Eduflow. A total of 3017 peer feedback segments were analysed, revealing that trained or untrained male and female assessors were comparable in most peer feedback specificity categories when assessing fictitious male or female assessees. Nonetheless, we also found that female assessors excelled in certain categories of peer
feedback specificity, while male assessors also demonstrated competencies in other categories. Results also showed that assessors who received assessment training provided localised peer
feedback in all the writing samples. Finally, gender and training did not affect participants’ trust in their abilities and (dis)comfort when providing peer feedback
Employee Perceptions of HRM and Burnout
No full textHigh-performance work systems have been touted as a potent strategy for reducing employee burnout. However, given competing empirical evidence and theoretical accounts, this chapter critically discusses the relationship between high-performance work systems and employee burnout. First, the competing theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence to date pertaining to this relationship is presented. Second, by critically reviewing the presented studies, the chapter attempts to reconcile these conflicting findings by illuminating the central role context as well as the importance of considering how HRM systems are measured (and by whom) and analyzed. Third, from the critical review of the presented studies, the chapter highlights areas for future research that are likely to advance insights on this relationship. These areas include the importance of investigating the burnout construct in its entirety, testing for the role of contextual factors (especially personal resources and leadership) and curvilinearity, and adopting more non-randomized quasi-experiments. Finally, the chapter concludes with practical recommendations about managing burnout including appropriate measurement tools (and the importance of regular assessment), and the necessity of equipping line managers with the skills to implement high-performance work systems effectively and ensure that the organization has structural mechanisms in place to avoid burnout more generally
Language Preferences of the Autistic Community and Educators Living in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
No full textThe aim of our co-produced, multiple methods study was to explore the language preferences of the autistic community in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as the preferences of educators supporting autistic learners in this region. A total of 111 participants completed the survey, which included both open- and close-ended questions. Ten of the participants were autistic educators, 35 were autistic non-educators, and 66 were non-autistic educators. Overall, autistic people preferred identity-first terms, such as autistic, neurodivergent, and neurodiverse over person-first terms (e.g., person with autism). Non-autistic educators showed no clear preference for any terms but acknowledged the importance of asking autistic people about their preferences. Based on our findings, it is recommended that educators respect the preferences of the individuals they support. When it is not possible to ask about preferences, educators should opt for identity-first and neuro-affirmative terms, while avoiding person-first terms