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Designing a wind energy harvester for connected vehicles in green cities
Get PDFElectric vehicles (EVs) have recently gained momentum as an integral part of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) when authorities started expanding their low emission zones (LEZs) in an effort to build green cities with low carbon footprints. Energy is one of the key requirements of EVs, not only to support the smooth and sustainable operation of EVs, but also to ensure connectivity between the vehicle and the infrastructure in the critical times such as disaster recovery operation. In this context, renewable energy sources (such as wind energy) have an important role to play in the automobile sector towards designing energy-harvesting electric vehicles (EH-EV) to mitigate energy reliance on the national grid. In this article, a novel approach is presented to harness energy from a small-scale wind turbine due to vehicle mobility to support the communication primitives in electric vehicles which enable plenty of IoV use cases. The harvested power is then processed through a regulation circuitry to consequently achieve the desired power supply for the end load (i.e., battery or super capacitor). The suitable orientation for optimum conversion efficiency is proposed through ANSYS-based aerodynamics analysis. The voltage-induced by the DC generator is 35 V under the no-load condition while it is 25 V at a rated current of 6.9 A at full-load, yielding a supply of 100 W (on constant voltage) at a speed of 90 mph for nominal battery charging
Introduction: approaching organizational learning through crisis management
Get PDFDo organizations learn from crises? And if they do, how? These questions have been an ongoing debate among scholars for over two decades. This debate has focused on the pessimist versus optimist perspective, inquiring into whether organizations are capable of learning from a crisis (c.f. Antonacopoulou & Sheaffer, 2014; Broekema, et al., 2017; Moynihan, 2008; Smith and Elliot, 2007; Zhou et al., 2018) and on the individual versus organizational perspective towards identifying the learning agents (Argyris & Schön, 1996, Deverell, 2013; Ellinger et al., 2015; Stemn et al., 2018; Weick & Ashford, 2001). There is full consensus that organizational crises are conducive to the process of intensive organizational knowledge acquisition as, more often than not, these crises are unique in their nature and the actions undertaken for their management are steps to the unknown. Crises also trigger organizational changes that would otherwise be impossible to happen. Therefore, shaping the ability of an organization to learn from a crisis is an important antecedent for its capability to cope with future crises
Predictors of parental knowledge of tobacco effects on health and parental perceptions on tobacco control measures at household level in selected urban residential areas of Dhaka city, Bangladesh
Get PDFThe study aimed to investigate parental knowledge of tobacco effects on health and parental perceptions on tobacco control measures at households in Dhaka city, Bangladesh. Out of 1436 tobacco-using parents, a total of 400 participants were selected for the cross-sectional survey using a multi-stage probability sampling. Overall knowledge and perceptions of parents were scored. Simple and multiple logistic regressions were performed. There were 19.8% of parents who had good knowledge about health effects of tobacco and 40.8% had positive perception on home initiatives of tobacco control measures respectively. The study revealed that knowledge of overall tobacco effects on health (AOR = 20.92, 95% CI = 2.60-167.83), asthma (AOR = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.17-0.49), infertility (AOR = 0.43, 95% CI = 0.24-0.77) and pre-eclampsia (AOR = 0.36, 95% CI = 0.14-0.90) were significantly increased the odds of parents good knowledge. Whereas, parental perceptions indicate that living in the joint family was positively associated with controlling tobacco use (AOR =3.10, 95% CI = 1.88-5.13). It suggests that health education programs need to be developed to improve parental awareness on the adverse health effects of tobacco-use at households
Neural architecture search of echocardiography view classifiers
Get PDFPurpose: Echocardiography is the most commonly used modality for assessing the heart in clinical practice. In an echocardiographic exam, an ultrasound probe samples the heart from different orientations and positions, thereby creating different viewpoints for assessing the cardiac function. The determination of the probe viewpoint forms an essential step in automatic echocardiographic image analysis.
Approach: In this study, convolutional neural networks are used for the automated identification of 14 different anatomical echocardiographic views (larger than any previous study) in a dataset of 8732 videos acquired from 374 patients. Differentiable architecture search approach was utilized to design small neural network architectures for rapid inference while maintaining high accuracy. The impact of the image quality and resolution, size of the training dataset, and number of echocardiographic view classes on the efficacy of the models were also investigated.
Results: In contrast to the deeper classification architectures, the proposed models had significantly lower number of trainable parameters (up to 99.9% reduction), achieved comparable classification performance (accuracy 88.4% to 96%, precision 87.8% to 95.2%, recall 87.1% to 95.1%) and real-time performance with inference time per image of 3.6 to 12.6 ms.
Conclusion: Compared with the standard classification neural network architectures, the proposed models are faster and achieve comparable classification performance. They also require less training data. Such models can be used for real-time detection of the standard views
Refugee and immigrant community health champions: a qualitative study of perceived barriers to service access and utilisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in the West Midlands, UK
Get PDFThere has been much discussion recently that better healthcare systems lead to increased service access and utilisation. However, there are still concerns raised among the refugee and immigrant communities about barriers to access and utilisation of primary healthcare services in the UK. This study aimed to explore with refugee and immigrant community health champions (CHCs) their perceptions about such barriers based on feedback in their own discussions with fellow refugees, asylum-seekers and immigrants in the West Midlands, UK. A total of 42 refugees and immigrants were recruited. Qualitative design-focused group discussions were conducted among purposively selected participants. These discussions were conducted between May and September 2019, and data were analysed using thematic analysis. The barriers to service access and utilisation are categorised into four themes: (i) knowledge about health issues that most affected refugees and immigrants; (ii) community indications of factors that obstructed service access; (iii) challenges in identifying local teams involved in service provision; and (iv) accurate knowledge about the different teams and their roles in facilitating access. This study higlighted that the levels of service access and utilisation would depend on the competence and effectiveness of the health system. Urgency and seriousness of individuals’ healthcare needs were the factors that were perceived to strongly influence refugees and immigrants to seek and utilise local services. We identified a number of potential barriers and challenges to service access and utilisation that should be overcome if primary healthcare service is to be planned and delivered effectively, efficiently and equitably in the West Midlands
‘The time has come’: reflections on the ‘tipping point’ in deciding on a care home move
Get PDFObjectives
Often perceived as a last resort, a care home move for a person living with dementia is often undertaken when all other options have been exhausted. Deciding the right or optimal time is to move remains an important question for many families.
To investigate factors that are weighed up in deciding to make a care home move.
Method
Qualitative in-depth interviews with 21 family carers and 5 care home residents living with dementia in England. Thematic analysis was applied to all transcripts to extract key themes and sub-themes; a summation is provided here.
Results
Participants emotionally recollected an accumulation of stressors, exhausting other options of care, a risk/benefit analysis, wishes of person living with dementia, and a readiness to move as indicators of when a ‘tipping point’ was reached. They also felt strongly that early planning, prior experience of care homes, understanding funding arrangements and having support with decision-making would help.
Conclusion
Deciding to move to a care home is complex, contextual and deeply personal. Early planning in the form of joining waiting lists, using day centres and respite services may help in creating relationships with intended care homes for the future. There is growing need for support with financial advice and funding arrangements, for both self- and publicly funded individuals
Qualitative study of UK health professionals’ experiences of working at the point of care during the COVID-19 pandemic
Get PDFObjectives
To develop an understanding of health professionals’ experiences of working at the point of care during the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact on their health and well-being and their support needs.
Design
A qualitative study using semistructured interviews. Data were analysed using framework analysis.
Setting
One large National Health Service integrated care trust.
Participants
A purposive sample of 19 qualified health professionals (doctors, nurses or allied health professionals), working with patients with COVID-19 admitted to the hospitals between March and May 2020 were eligible to take part.
Results
Eight major categories were identified: (1) Working in a ‘war zone’, (2) ‘Going into a war zone without a weapon’, (3) ‘Patients come first’, (4) Impact of COVID-19, (5) Leadership and management, (6) Support systems, (7) Health professionals’ support needs, and (8) Camaraderie and pride. Health professionals reported increased levels of stress, anxiety and a lack of sleep. They prioritised their patients’ needs over their own and felt a professional obligation to be at work. A key finding was the reported camaraderie among the health professionals where they felt that they were ‘fighting this war together’.
Conclusions
This study provides a valuable insight into the experiences of some of the frontline health professionals working in a large London-based hospital trust during the first COVID-19 peak. Findings from this study could be used to inform how managers, leaders and organisations can better support their health professional staff during the current pandemic and beyond
Completion time minimization for UAV-assisted mobile-edge computing systems
Get PDFThe explosive computation demands in the Internet of Things (IoT) have triggered the research interests on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted mobile-edge computing (MEC) systems even though there are still many challenges, such as computing delay requirement, time slot partition, and trajectory design. This letter focuses on the computing delay issue in MEC systems assisted by multiple UAVs with the goal of task completion time minimization. In particular, both the partial offloading and binary offloading modes are considered by jointly optimizing time slot size, terminal devices (TDs) scheduling, computation resource allocation, and UAVs' trajectories. Particularly, an non-LoS channel model is adopted for UAV-ground communication. To handle the problem, we develop a joint optimization algorithm by invoking the concave-convex procedure method, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions and penalized method. Numerical results show that the completion time can be significantly decreased by the proposed algorithm
World tourism cities: a systematic approach to urban tourism
No full textWorld Tourism Cities: A Systematic Approach to Urban Tourism is a unique and contemporary textbook that addresses the particular situation of urban tourism destinations in the 2020s by reviewing key issues, trends, challenges and future opportunities for urban tourism destinations worldwide, as well as city destination management.
The book is divided into four parts, with Part I providing background chapters on world tourism cities. It begins by clearly defining world tourism cities and explaining the impacts of globalisation and urbanisation on these cities. The subsequent chapter explains the urban tourism phenomenon and trace its growth. Part II presents city destination management, planning and development, and the marketing and branding of cities, offering practical solutions and approaches. Part III discusses major issues and trends in world tourism cities including resident well-being and quality of life, sustainability, smart tourism, crises, and the rise of tourism in Asian cities, and the final part identifies the future opportunities for city tourism.
Written in a student friendly tone, the book is richly illustrated and contains several engaging features including Sweet Tweets (snippets of information on cities) and Short Breaks (detailed case studies on cities). This will be essential reading for all Tourism students.
Table of Contents
PART I: BACKGROUND
1. What is a world tourism city?
2. Globalisation and world tourism cities
3. The growth of the urban tourism phenomenon
PART II: MANAGEMENT, PLANNING, DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING OF WORLD TOURISM CITIES
4. City destination management
5. Planning and development of world tourism cities
6. Marketing and branding of world tourism cities
PART III: TRENDS, ISSUES AND CHALLENGES FOR WORLD TOURISM CITIES
7. Quality of life and resident well-being in world tourism cities
8. Sustainability in world tourism cities
9. Smart cities and smart tourism in cities
10. World tourism cities in crisis times
11. The rise of the Asian world tourism cities
PART IV: THE FUTURE FOR WORLD TOURISM CITIES
12. Future opportunities for world tourism citie
Consumer (non) complaint behavior: an empirical analysis of senior consumers in Germany
Get PDFSince studies in the field of complaint research primarily look at the group of complainers, little is known about the group of non-complainers. For this reason, in addition to the complainers, the non-complainers should also be considered in the present study in order to help close the existing research gap. The focus of this study is on older people aged 60 and over, as this group of people has received little attention in research to date. Thus, this study contributes to the emerging research field of "Economics of Population Aging". The research question is: Why do men and women aged 60 and older (not) complain in dissatisfaction situations? Data collection for the study was conducted via a representative, ad hoc, online survey in January, 2020 just bevor COVID-19 restrictions were in place. In total, data was collected from 533 people, 229 of whom had had negative experiences when purchasing a product or service. This sample was then evaluated and analyzed. In particular, the phenomenon of "not complaining" was investigated in a data-based manner. Among other things, the study shows that certain characteristics can be attributed to non-complainers