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On the design and structural study of a rear swing arm for an electric bike
Get PDFAs electric bikes continue to grow in popularity, it is important to ensure that they are equipped with well-designed components. One such component is the rear swing arm (RSA). This study deals with the design and structural analysis of an RSA used for electric bikes. This RSA is composed of two swing arms (one on each side of the bikes), a yoke, a suspension block, and bolts or screws. First, an analytical approach was developed to calculate the initial values for the width and shape of the swing arm. Next, experimental data were used to analyze the response of the RSA and determine the final profile for the swing arms and yoke structure. Finally, the finite element approach was implemented to assess the stress, displacement, and fatigue responses of the RSA when subjected to realistic excitations and conditions. The initial results depicted the following characteristics for the RSA: C-channel profile, 43 mm height, and 2 mm wall thickness. These results implied that the maximum shear force would occur in a region representing approximately 15.5% of the total length of the RSA. Further analysis and calculations showed that this region would decrease to approximately 2.85% of the total length of the RSA. For the final design, the mechanical performance of the RSA was observed to remain acceptable despite the relatively high Von Mises stress values around these singularities. This study assumed the use of 7075 T651 aluminum alloy as the primary material for the RSA
Training for the impossible? induction and identity formation among trainee teachers and psychoanalysts
Get PDFThis article explores the systems under which teachers and psychoanalysts are trained in England and how trainees in these professions are inducted into their respective cultures. Both of these were deemed as ‘impossible professions’ in Freud’s evocative phrase and the authors enquire whether the training and resulting process of identity formation make teaching and psychoanalysis particularly open to such notions of ‘impossibility’. The article acknowledges the complex and demanding routes offered to new entrants into these fields and how the person-centred aspects of both disciplines leave trainees susceptible to a certain professional and personal vulnerability. It is argued such vulnerability requires a particularly strong sense of belonging as part of the trainees’ formation of identity. Processes such as effective mentoring, supervision and peer support are critical to ensuring new entrants are able to complete the course of training relatively unscathed and with a balanced idea of who they are and where they stand within their respective areas of work
Family business and corporate fraud in a transitional economy
No full textResearch on family firms often assumes them to be long-term oriented and care about their reputation, but this assumption is not investigated in transitional economies. We propose that family firms in transitional economies may commit more corporate fraud compared to other privately-controlled firms. Due to the lack of legitimacy, family firms face more resource limitations and thus have a lower possibility of survival, which leads them to risk committing fraud in order to survive. To verify our logic, we explore the tendency of family firms to engage in fraud when they are subject to greater survival pressures, when they have social-political sources of support, and when the intensity of external monitoring changes. Our argument is supported by examining publicly listed private firms in China from 2003 to 2015. Our research contributes to the literature on family businesses by showing how institutional contexts impact family business attributes, and to research on corporate fraud by understanding the influence of organizational legitimacy and family governance
Revolutionising financial portfolio management: the non-stationary transformer's fusion of macroeconomic indicators and sentiment analysis in a deep reinforcement learning framework
Get PDFIn the evolving landscape of portfolio management (PM), the fusion of advanced machine learning techniques with traditional financial methodologies has opened new avenues for innovation. Our study introduces a cutting-edge model combining deep reinforcement learning (DRL) with a non-stationary transformer architecture. This model is designed to decode complex patterns in financial time-series data, enhancing portfolio management strategies with deeper insights and robustness. It effectively tackles the challenges of data heterogeneity and market uncertainty, key obstacles in PM. Our approach integrates key macroeconomic indicators and targeted news sentiment analysis into its framework, capturing a comprehensive picture of market dynamics. This amalgamation of varied data types addresses the multifaceted nature of financial markets, enhancing the model’s ability to navigate the complexities of asset management. Rigorous testing demonstrates the model’s efficacy, highlighting the benefits of blending diverse data sources and sophisticated algorithmic approaches in mastering the nuances of PM
Metabolic responses to exercise
No full textExercise is associated with a complex interplay of distinct metabolic responses among children and adolescents. Using a variety of techniques and study designs, considerable progress to characterise these metabolic responses has been made over the last 90 years. Yet, measures in the paediatric literature are often bound to more stringent ethical and technical constraints than the adult literature. As such, minimally invasive respiratory gas and blood indicators of substrate and energy use have provided a platform for much of the evidence among children and adolescents, whereas insight into the underlying mechanisms at the muscle cell level remains profoundly limited and reliant on studies conducted ~40– 50 years ago. This chapter provides a critical discussion and synthesis of the available paediatric- specific literature on the metabolic responses to exercise, highlighting relevant methodological issues, gaps in knowledge, and current views. The initial focus centres on energy provision during exercise in relation to key influencing factors, particularly chronological age and puberty. Carbohydrate and fat metabolism are central to these discussions, as the contribution of protein to energy expenditure during exercise is often deemed negligible. With the acute metabolic responses to exercise having implications for cardiometabolic disease risk, the chapter culminates in a discussion of this growing evidence base in relation to postprandial glycaemia, insulinaemia, and lipaemia. Distinguishing between chronological age (referred to as ‘age’ for simplicity) and pubertal stage is a key theme throughout; where this is not essential to the interpretation of findings or findings are based on mixed samples of children and adolescents, the collective term ‘young people’ is used. Where relevant, findings from adult samples are used to provide insight into underlying mechanisms and highlight gaps in knowledge among young people
Information-centric mobile networks: a survey, discussion, and future research directions
Get PDFInformation-centric networking (ICN) and its fruition, the named data networking (NDN) is a paradigm shift from host-centric address-based communication architecture to the content-centric name-based one. ICN intends to resolve various major issues faced by today's internet architecture such as privacy, security, consistent routing, and mobility, to name a few. With the massive increase of mobile data traffic in today's era, mobility is one of the major concerns in networking. On the one hand, ICN realization i.e., the NDN follows a pull-based communication model and natively supports the consumer (end-user) mobility in wired networks by maintaining the forwarding states on intermediate nodes. Nevertheless, the mobile consumer nodes confront issues in wireless networking environments such as excessive energy consumption as a result of request flooding, content retrieval delays due to intermittent connectivity, and bandwidth consumption due to the broadcasting nature of the wireless medium, among others. The producer (content-generator) mobility, on the other hand, was not initially supported in the original architectural design of NDN for both wired and wireless networks. Therefore, to efficiently address the degradation issues incurred by mobile consumer/producer nodes, a plethora of mobility management schemes have been proposed over the recent few years. In this paper, we provided a detailed survey on the existing research efforts - in the context of producer, consumer, and hybrid mobility, that have been proposed in the literature. Moreover, we outlined various research directions considering the role of mobility in futuristic technologies such as artificial intelligence-enabled smart networks, software-defined networking, edge computing, vehicular-fog computing, autonomous driving, semantic communication, and resource-constrained Internet of Things
Performance of the FreeStyle Libre Flash glucose monitoring system during an oral glucose tolerance test and exercise in healthy adolescents
Get PDFThis study's aim was to assess FreeStyle Libre Flash glucose monitoring (FGM) performance during an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) and treadmill exercise in healthy adolescents. This should advance the feasibility and utility of user-friendly technologies for metabolic assessments in adolescents. Seventeen healthy adolescents (nine girls aged 12.8 ± 0.9 years) performed an OGTT and submaximal and maximal treadmill exercise tests in a laboratory setting. The scanned interstitial fluid glucose concentration ([ISFG]) obtained by FGM was compared against finger-prick capillary plasma glucose concentration ([CPG]) at 0 (pre-OGTT), -15, -30, -60, -120 min post-OGTT, pre-, mid-, post- submaximal exercise, and pre- and post- maximal exercise. Overall mean absolute relative difference (MARD) was 13.1 ± 8.5%, and 68% (n = 113) of the paired glucose data met the ISO 15197:2013 criteria. For clinical accuracy, 84% and 16% of FGM readings were within zones A and B in the Consensus Error Grid (CEG), respectively, which met the ISO 15197:2013 criteria of having at least 99% of results within these zones. Scanned [ISFG] were statistically lower than [CPG] at 15 (-1.16 mmol∙L-1, p < 0.001) and 30 min (-0.74 mmol∙L-1, p = 0.041) post-OGTT. Yet, post-OGTT glycaemic responses assessed by total and incremental areas under the curve (AUCs) were not significantly different, with trivial to small effect sizes (p ≥ 0.084, d = 0.14-0.45). Further, [ISFGs] were not different from [CPGs] during submaximal and maximal exercise tests (interaction p ≥ 0.614). FGM can be a feasible alternative to reflect postprandial glycaemia (AUCs) in healthy adolescents who may not endure repeated finger pricks
Tourism development in Creole spaces: a Saint Lucia Island perspective
No full textThe Caribbean archipelago functions in its entirety as a Creole space-the geographic boundaries and demographic compositions defining the context of Creole history and culture. As with other islands elsewhere, the region is heavily tourism dependent. Thus, exploring and gaining in-depth understanding of the relationship between Creole spaces and tourism development is important. This work examines the perceptions of the local population on tourism development in the Saint Lucian Creole space through qualitative data collection. This study is set in the western tourist capital, Soufriere, an area laden with history from indigenous people to European colonization, slavery, and indentured labour. The relationship between tourism and culture is explored in terms of Creole identity, destination marketing, and stakeholder involvement in cultural tourism development. Consequently, the Four Cs Framework for Creole Cultural tourism Space (CCTS) development is proffered. Though tourism can be perceived an invasion of the Creole space, if properly managed, it can enhance product development while enabling safeguarding the rich, Creole cultural heritage
Medical imaging and healthcare applications using 5G
No full textAs an enabling technology for sharing data and computing power, the cloud has brought significant changes to many industries, including the medical and healthcare sector. With 5G on the horizon, ultra-fast and low-latency data transmission on the cloud and via the will enable more intelligent and interactive medical and health applications. This chapter presents a survey of 5G technologies and their related medical and healthcare applications. Not to overwhelm readers with 5G details, it starts with constraints confronted by traditional medicare applications to induce the benefits of cloud computing. Then the medical-imaging application is employed as a central example to explain the impacts of the cloud and 5G. In addition, a variety of healthcare applications that will benefit from 5G are introduced. For advanced readers who are curious about technologies, we also provide details of 5G in the latter half of the chapter, including the software-defined network, 5G architecture, and edge computing
Moving from ‘what we know works’ to ‘what we do in practice’: an evidence overview of implementation and diffusion of innovation in transition to adulthood for care experienced young people
Get PDFGlobal research has shown that most young people who are care experienced are not prepared to transition to independent living at 18 years of age and require support into early adulthood. We used rigorous systematic methods to identify English-based peer reviewed and grey literature describing innovations relevant to care experienced youngpeople as they transition into adulthood, with a focus upon lessons for their implementation and diffusion. We synthesised the evidence narratively and organise data linked to seven key areas important to the transition to adulthood: (1) Health and well-being;(2) relationships; (3) education and training; (4) employment; (5) participation in society;(6) accommodation; (7) other. Twenty-five papers met our inclusion criteria. This review has found that, whilst there are a broad spectrum of innovations taking place within the social care environment for care experienced young people to support their transition into adulthood, there exists limited insight into how best to support implementation and diffusion of evidence-based innovation. We drew upon the ‘ConsolidatedFramework for Implementation Research’, developed in the setting of clinical service delivery, to highlight challenges in implementing and diffusing evidence-based innovation for care experienced young people transitioning into adulthood
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