1,845 research outputs found
Hybrid intelligent control of an infrared dryer
No full textM. Mohammadzaheri, L. Chen, A. Mirsepahi, M. Ghanbari, Z. D. Prim
Mapping research trends of universal health coverage from 1990 to 2019: Bibliometric analysis
No full textBackground: Universal health coverage (UHC) is one of many ambitious, health-related, sustainable development goals. Sharing various experiences of achieving UHC, in terms of challenges, pitfalls, and future prospects, can help policy and decision-makers reduce the likelihood of committing errors. As such, scholarly articles and technical reports are of paramount importance in shedding light on the determinants that make it possible to achieve UHC. Objective: The purpose of this study is to conduct a comprehensive analysis of UHC-related scientific literature from 1990 to 2019. Methods: We carried out a bibliometric analysis of papers related to UHC published from January 1990 to September 2019 and indexed in Scopus via VOSviewer (version 1.6.13; CWTS). Relevant information was extracted: the number of papers published, the 20 authors with the highest number of publications in the field of UHC, the 20 journals with the highest number of publications related to UHC, the 20 most active funding sources for UHC-related research, the 20 institutes and research centers that have produced the highest number of UHC-related research papers, the 20 countries that contributed the most to the research field of UHC, the 20 most cited papers, and the latest available impact factors of journals in 2018 that included the UHC-related items under investigation. Results: In our analysis, 7224 articles were included. The publication trend was increasing, showing high interest in the scientific community. Most researchers were from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, with Thailand being a notable exception. The Lancet accounted for 3.95 of published UHC-related research. Among the top 20 funding sources, the World Health Organization (WHO), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) accounted for 1.41, 1.34, and 1.02 of published UHC-related research, respectively. The highest number of citations was found for articles published in The Lancet, the American Journal of Psychiatry, and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The top keywords were �health insurance,� �insurance,� �healthcare policy,� �healthcare delivery,� �economics,� �priority,� �healthcare cost,� �organization and management,� �health services accessibility,� �reform,� �public health,� and �health policy.� Conclusions: The findings of our study showed an increasing scholarly interest in UHC and related issues. However, most research concentrated in middle- and high-income regions and countries. Therefore, research in low-income countries should be promoted and supported, as this could enable a better understanding of the determinants of the barriers and obstacles to UHC achievement and improve global health. © Mahboubeh Khaton Ghanbari, Masoud Behzadifar, Leila Doshmangir, Mariano Martini, Ahad Bakhtiari, Mahtab Alikhani, Nicola Luigi Bragazz
Stopping Floods with Buckets: Attack and Countermeasure for IOTA Autopeering
No full textDistributed Ledger Technology (DLT) is one of the most promising technology at present with applications in different domains, such as Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and Internet of Thing (IoT). IOTA is an example of Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based DLTs applicable to IoT, addressing the issues of scalability, consensus complexity, and mining incentives of blockchains. In order to join the network and to later disseminate fresh information, nodes exploit IOTA's autopeering module. The security of this module is hence of fundamental importance for the network liveness, however this requirement has never been analyzed in the literature.In this paper, we provide the first security analysis of the autopeering module of the Coordicide, IOTA's main framework. We divide the contribution in two parts: i) we show that the peer-discovery process in the autopeering module is vulnerable to flooding attack, a type of Denial of Service (DoS), and ii) we propose Time Constrained Identity Match (TID), a novel protocol to mitigate the flooding attack. In particular, we compare two implementations of TID: leaky-TID based on leaky bucket, and token-Tid based on token bucket. We discuss their suitability to IOTA both in terms of effectiveness in mitigating the flooding attack and in terms of resource consumption (memory and CPU). Based on the results, we observe that leaky-TID shows the better performance in preventing flooding attacks, reducing the traffic under attack by 67% and reducing memory consumption by 12.5%
Knocking on Tangle's Doors: Security Analysis of IOTA Ports
No full textBlockchains are currently deployed in a large number of different scenarios, such as cryptocurrencies, communications, factory automation, and vehicular networks. Both academia's and industry's interest in this technology is motivated by its distributed nature and its inherent security in managing information. However, traditional blockchains are limited in terms of the transaction rate they can approve. To overcome this limitation, IOTA proposed a novel blockchain based on a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) structure (the Tangle). It handles a larger number of transactions to target high-traffic scenarios such as Internet of Things (IoT). However, the security of the IOTA's blockchain depends on the design of its underlying communication protocols. In this paper, we analyze the security of the IOTA Tangle from a transport layer perspective. In particular, we show that well-known port-based attacks can jeopardize the integrity and availability of the IOTA services. We focus on the IOTA's TCP-based ports, and provide a discussion of all the possible attacks and their effects. We assess their validity via experimental evaluation showing their effect on the network operations. Results show that SYN flooding affects the gossip protocol by fully disrupting the service. We also find that 16% of the nodes are unable to create a neighbours list, leading to a disruption of the information exchange process. On the other side, we also show that some components are not affected by these attacks. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to identify and validate these vulnerabilities in IOTA. Lastly, we discuss some possible countermeasures
Cultivation: Effects of Different Manures on Plant Growth and Essential Oil Production during Consecutive Harvests
No full textx
Coppice and coppice-with-standard stands systems: implications for forest management and biodiversity
No full textSajad Ghanbari and Seyed Mohammad Moein Sadeghi; Seyed Mohammad Moein Sadegh
A policy analysis of agenda-setting of Brucellosis in Iran using multiple streams framework: health policy and historical implications
No full textBackground: Brucellosis, a major zoonotic disease, is highly present in Iran, especially in Lorestan province. The aim of this study was to understand the issues related to Brucellosis utilizing the multiple streams framework.
Methods: A two-step method was adopted: i) assessment of brucellosis-related documents and ii) interviews with stakeholders.
Results: The problem stream was characterized by: 1) high prevalence of the disease, 2) traditional livestock production, 3) unsafe animal slaughtering, 4) centers for the sale and distribution of non-authorized dairy products, 5) raw milk and 6) traditional unsafe dairy products consumption, 7) incomplete livestock vaccination, 8) lack of knowledge of Brucellosis, 9) neighboring countries with high prevalence of Brucellosis, 10) lack of livestock quarantine, and 10) nomadic immigration. The policy stream was characterized by 1) primary healthcare networks, 2) guidelines, 3) medicines, insurance, and 4) diagnostic services. Finally, the political stream was characterized by: 1) support of the University of Medical Sciences, 2) sponsorship by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, 3) Health transformation plan, and 4) Working Group on Health and Food Security in Lorestan.
Conclusion: This study examined the brucellosis-related agenda setting: if different issues are taken into consideration, it can be perceived as a health priority
Impact of CO2 solubility on design of single well tracer tests to evaluate residual saturation during carbon capture and storage
No full textSingle-well tracer technique have been well applied in many petroleum industry and environmental applications. However, these tests have not been well developed for CO2 geological storage purposes to evaluate residual CO2 saturation during the appraisal phase of site investigation, due to the challenges occurring from the complex phase behaviour. In this study, two single-well tracer tests are numerically modelled to quantify the residual gas saturation. Our study addresses the design of an alternative single well tracer test sequence, which involved a single pass of the tracer saturated water over the residually trapped zone, thereby reducing the amount of CO2 dissolution into the tracer solution. A one-dimensional numerical modelling of the tracer propagation and partitioning with homogenous properties was used for the calculations of the difference in tracer breakthrough times during water withdrawal from the tests. Model sensitivity variations were applied to analyse the impact of reservoir and treatment design parameters on the residual gas saturation. The residual gas saturations calculated reflect the input values, including the effect of hysteresis, to within 10% accuracy. It was found that changing the CO2 saturated water volume injected after CO2 made the CO2 front to travel to different distances from the well, and thus the tracer had different size of residually trapped zones to travel through when it is back produced and encounters different residual gas saturations, and therefore affected the residual gas saturation calculations. The modelling also shows that optimal injection of CO2-saturated water to prevent the dissolution of the residually trapped CO2 and establish the residually trapped zone was challenging to achieve, and therefore using the fluid withdrawal method was more robust to establish the residually trapped zone. This is because of the dependency of solubility on pressure. The numerical models may be used to design, optimise, and interpret the field tests.Document Type: Original articleCited as: Awag, M., Mackay, E., Ghanbari, S. Impact of CO2 solubility on design of single well tracer tests to evaluate residual saturation during carbon capture and storage. Advances in Geo-Energy Research, 2024, 11(1): 6-19. https://doi.org/10.46690/ager.2024.01.0
Universal Health Coverage to counteract the economic impact of the COVID-19 infection: Current practices and ethical challenges
No full textIn late December 2019, the first case of an emerging coronavirus was identified in the city of Wuhan, Hubei province, in mainland China. The novel virus appears to be highly contagious and is rapidly spreading worldwide, becoming a pandemic. The disease is causing a high toll of deaths. Effective public health responses to a new infectious disease are expected to mitigate and counteract its negative impact on the population. However, time and economic-financial constraints, as well as uncertainty, can jeopardize the answer. The aim of the present paper was to discuss the role of Universal Health Coverage to counteract the economic impact of the COVID-19 infection. Appropriate financing of the health system and ensuring equitable access to health services for all can, indeed, protect individuals against high medical costs, which is one of the most important goals of any health system. Financing profoundly affects the performance of the health system, and any policy that the health system decides to implement or not directly depends on the amount of available funding. Developed countries are injecting new funding to cope with the disease and prevent its further transmission. In addition to psychological support and increased societal engagement for the prevention, control, and treatment of COVID-19, extensive financial support to governments by the community should be considered. Developed and rich countries should support countries that do not have enough financial resources. This disease cannot be controlled and contained without international cooperation. The experience of the COVID-19 should be a lesson for further establishing and achieving universal health coverage in all countries. In addition to promoting equity in health, appropriate infrastructure should be strengthened to address these crises. Governments should make a stronger political commitment to fully implement this crucial set of policies and plans
Image quality assessment based on harmonics gain/loss information
No full textWe present an objective reduced-reference image quality assessment method based on harmonic gain/loss information through a discriminative analysis of local harmonic strength (LHS). The LHS is computed from the gradient of images, and its value represents a relative degree of the appearance of blockiness on images when it is related to energy gain within an image. Furthermore, comparison between local harmonic strength values from an original, distortion-free image and a degraded, processed, or compressed version of the image shows that the LHS can also be used to indicate other types of degradations, such as blurriness that corresponds with energy loss. Our simulations show that we can develop a single metric based on this gain/loss information and use it to rate the quality of images encoded by various encoders such as DCT-based JPEG, wavelet-based JPEG 2000, or various processed images. We show that our method can overcome some limitations of the traditional PSNR
- …
