125 research outputs found
Communication Technologies for Vehicles: Third International Workshop, Nets4Cars/Nets4Trains 2011 Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany, March 23-24, 2011 Proceedings
No full textThe Communication Technologies for Vehicles workshop series provides an international forum on latest technologies and research in the field of intra- and inter-vehicle communications in which to present original research results in all areas relating to communication protocols and standards, mobility and traffic models, experimental and field operational testing, and performance analysis
Estimation of Distribution of Income in Pakistan, Using Micro Data
No full textIncome distribution entered the post war discussion of economic development fairly late. Until the 1960s much of the focus was on industrialisation and the need for capital accumulation. Pakistan was no exception as in the early 60s economic expansion became the main target and means to political identity. Rapid population growth associated with steep decline in mortality demanded acceleration of production to keep pace. Overall aggregate expansion was much faster than before but without benefit for the poor. In that context emerged a new professional interest in income distribution. Haq’s (1964) study was one of the oldest studies conducted to measure inequality in personal income distribution in the high income brackets in the urban areas of Pakistan. The main objective of the author was to present the income distribution pattern in terms of the relative shares of different income groups as well as in terms of Pareto coefficients and concentration ratio during the period 1948-49 to 1957-58 for which published tax data was available. While recognising the limitations of the data used, the author went on to calculate various measures of income inequality including Pareto coefficient and Lorenz curve. The author also made comparison of Pakistan’s income distribution with U.S.A. and U.K.
Mobilization against Domestic Violence Amongst Women's Organizations in Norway
No full textThe following thesis explores the different mobilization and self-advocacy strategies used by minority women involved in domestic violence advocacy in Norway. Using resource mobilization theory, the theory of political opportunity structures as well as an intersectional analysis, this thesis examines the different factors that influence their ability to mobilize and gain access to opportunities to further their advocacy efforts.
The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with minority women activists based in Oslo Norway, with the aim of capturing their unique experiences and voices in the women’s movement. The results suggest that minority women activists face multiple challenges when engaging in domestic violence advocacy due to the lack of stable funding, the lack of culturally and linguistically diverse services for minority women, and the negative framing of immigrant women within the Norwegian political landscape that excludes them from mainstream gender equality initiatives.
The results reflect the current situation of the Norwegian women’s movement characterized by separate organizing between minority and majority women organizations due to having ‘separate interests’. Further research is suggested on exploring framing processes regarding minority women for a more thorough analysi
Mobilization against Domestic Violence Amongst Women's Organizations in Norway
No full textThe following thesis explores the different mobilization and self-advocacy strategies used by minority women involved in domestic violence advocacy in Norway. Using resource mobilization theory, the theory of political opportunity structures as well as an intersectional analysis, this thesis examines the different factors that influence their ability to mobilize and gain access to opportunities to further their advocacy efforts.
The analysis is based on semi-structured interviews with minority women activists based in Oslo Norway, with the aim of capturing their unique experiences and voices in the women’s movement. The results suggest that minority women activists face multiple challenges when engaging in domestic violence advocacy due to the lack of stable funding, the lack of culturally and linguistically diverse services for minority women, and the negative framing of immigrant women within the Norwegian political landscape that excludes them from mainstream gender equality initiatives.
The results reflect the current situation of the Norwegian women’s movement characterized by separate organizing between minority and majority women organizations due to having ‘separate interests’. Further research is suggested on exploring framing processes regarding minority women for a more thorough analysispublishedVersio
Hydraulic simulations to evaluate and predict design and operation of the Chashma Right Bank Canal
No full textIrrigation systems / Irrigation canals / Flow control / Velocity / Canal regulation techniques / Hydraulics / Simulation models / Design / Operations / Crop-based irrigation / Distributary canals / Water delivery / Policy / Protective irrigation / Water allocation / Water requirements / Sedimentation / Water distribution / Equity / Water conveyance / Pakistan / Chashma Right Bank Canal
Computational Reproducibility of "The Impact of Presidential Appointment of Judges: Montesquieu or the Federalists?"
No full textWe computationally reproduce the central findings in Mehmood (2022), which studied the effect of a 2010 reform in Pakistan replacing the presidential appointment of high-court judges with peer appointments. Mehmood leveraged judicial records interpreted and coded by lawyers in Pakistan at the levels of cases, districts, benches, and individual judges. We successfully execute all Stata code in the author's replication archive without any errors, then translate and execute that code in R, again finding no serious errors. Consequently, we reproduce the article's main findings from regressions in Tables 2-4. Additionally, we successfully reconstruct the primary treatment variables of these regressions, after corresponding with the author to clarify precisely how to do so. We then replicate the main findings from regressions in Tables 2-10. Finally, we identify several minor errors which left the article's findings intact. Overall, this report reveals no serious defects in Mehmood (2022). We publicly archive our replication code and a spreadsheet of our results
Gender Bias during Essay Assessment: Still There or Finally Gone?
No full textThe objective of the present research was to explore underlying gender biases that may affect essay assessment. A review of previous research (Goldberg 1968, King 1998) reported that essay assessors typically graded female-authored essays lower than their male-authored counterparts, despite both essays consisting of the same content. However, a recent research study (Birch et al, 2016) did not corroborate with the earlier findings, and found no such bias. This could be explained by the change in attitudes towards women within the educational realm, or the lack of power due to only having ten participants.
This study attempted to recruit 200 adult participants, through both snowball and opportunistic sampling methods primarily from a student population.
An independent groups design was used, consisting of two groups; both grading the same essay. Participants were randomly assigned to their group via Qualtrics and asked to read the essay and complete the essay grading online. The chosen essay was on the effects of boarding school on development, and was either authored by a female or male name. The dependent variables were the overall grades awarded to the essay using a five-point scale scoring rubric from Francis et al (2003). Demographic information was also collected from participants including age, gender and familiarity with the essay content.
The results will give an indication as to whether gender bias still exists in essay assessment using a large sample. The size of the sample will allow examination of other demographic factors that may interact with gender and essay assessment
Influence of rheology on the motility of microorganisms: An experimental study on the motility of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in viscoelastic fluids
No full textFlagellar locomotion is one of the first forms of locomotion on our planet. Microorganisms use their flagella to reorientate or generate movement in search for nutrients or gradients in light intensity. These microscopic swimmers are able to adapt their swimming gait to the circumstances they encounter. Motile microorganisms such as the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii are used as a source of inspiration in biomimetics and used in biological, pharmaceutical and industrial applications to produce for example biofuels or medication. The fluids in which these microscopic cells swim are often of complex rheology, containing macromolecules such as synthetic polymers of proteins, which influences themotile behaviour of these cells. The motile behaviour is mostly studied in a quasi 2D environment which might be different from the behavior in a more natural 3D environment. Therefore, our aim is to analyse the motility of microorganisms in a 3D environment in fluids with different rheological properties.To gain more insight in the influence of rheology on the motility of microorganisms, the model microorganism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is observed in fluids of various levels of elasticity. An in-house 3D microscopic setup, consisting of 4 LaVision sCMOS cameras, is used to observe the motility of the cells. A Lagrangian tracking algorithm is used to detect and follow many individual motile cells simultaneously. We focused on the velocity of the cells, their helical motions (radius and pitch) which they use to scan their surroundings, and their flagellar beating frequency. We observed a velocity and pitch independent of the Deborah number, whereas decreasing values for these metrics were found in Newtonian fluids of equal viscosity. The radius of the helical motion showed to be independent of elasticity or viscosity. The beating frequency of the cells shows to be constant in a viscoelastic fluid independent on the viscosity or elasticity, whereas it tends to decrease in Newtonian fluids of increasing viscosity. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii might have developed a more efficient swimming gait to propel themselves in a viscoelastic fluid compared to a Newtonian fluid, especially in high viscosities. Moreover, we argued that motile microorganisms that are allowed to swim freely in a 3D confinement, show a different motile behaviour than when their motility is constricted by a quasi 2D plane. To validate these findings we recommend to perform experiments both in quasi 2D and 3D, while using the same cell culture.Mechanical Engineering | Energy and Process Technolog
Development of an Audio Assessment Module: For Sound Engineering of Aircraft Designs
No full textA first step in designing aircraft with optimal sound is the development of a module that is able to assess noise in a sophisticated way, which is the exact goal of this research. In this research the Audio Assessment Module (AAM) is completed with the addition of tonality, roughness and fluctuation strength. The AAM is now able to assess sound in terms of five sound quality metrics, specifically loudness, tonality, roughness, sharpness and fluctuation strength, but also in terms of conventional metrics such as EPNL. The five sound quality metrics can be combined to form a psychoacoustic annoyance value PAmod. The AAM is applied to a variety of sound recordings, including 255 measured aircraft flyover measurements of 26 different types of aircraft, in an attempt to find relations between design variables and the five sound quality metrics. The only significant correlations observed are those of the wingspan, wing loading and engine diameter with loudness. High values for roughness are observed for helicopter sounds due to the buzzing sound produced by the helicopter rotor, indicating that roughness is an important metric for propeller aircraft or aircraft with open-rotor engines. Listening tests, with the aim of learning whether the psychoacoustic annoyance value is a better annoyance predictor than EPNL, were conducted in which twenty subjects participated. From the listening tests it was found that the metrics did not outperform each other in terms of annoyance assessment. However, some deficiencies of the PAmod metric came to light during the listening tests. For a valid comparison of two sounds in terms of PAmod the duration of the sounds has to be the same, since the values "exceeded 5% of the time" are used in the calculation of PAmod. It was also found that the loudness contribution to PAmod might be too high. More research into PAmod can potentially improve correlations with subjective evaluations. The ultimate aim of an audio assessment module is to use it for sound engineering of aircraft designs. The sound quality metrics are capable of capturing the different characteristics of sound in a more comprehensive manner than for example EPNL. Differences in sound for current aircraft or future concepts such as aircraft powered with open-rotor engines can be captured by the individual metrics. This can then be used for sound engineering of aircraft designs in which the design is modified in such a way to arrive at a sound which is as close as feasible to the target sound. In this way, it is possible to design aircraft which sound inherently more acceptable and reduce the annoyance caused to residents by aircraft noise.Aerospace Engineerin
Study of Rheological Behaviour of Spherocylindrical Particle Suspension via CFD-DEM: Formulation of Stress-Closure for Industrial Fluidized Bed Simulation
No full textWhile colloidal suspensions of non-spherical particles have been studied relatively extensively, granular suspensions of non-spherical particles are rarely studied. The rheological behaviour of elongated granular particles is therefore not well known. This thesis deals with suspensions of rod-like particles of aspect ratio 4 subjected to shear flow in a low-density, highly viscous Newtonian fluid. CFD-DEM simulations for a periodic shear box have been performed for a pre-estimated range of shear rates and volume fractions. Dependence of rheological properties like shear stresses, relative viscosity, granular temperature, pressure and normal stress differences on the shear rate and volume fraction have been studied. These granular rods show shear thickening behaviour. The spherocylindrical particle suspensions experience less collisional stresses than spherical particles due to preferred particle alignment in the shear direction. Herschel and Bulkley [1] model is used to fit the collisional stress data. Two different regimes have been identified for granular suspension based on the flow index. Interestingly, a relatively large range of shear rates and associated stress can be expressed in the form of a simple equation based on Broughton and Squires [2] model. This stress closure will further be used in more coarse grid models like MP-PIC which can simulate an industrial fluidized bed reactors of non-spherical particles.Chemical Engineerin
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