Front-of-pack labelling (FOPL) systems, such as the Nutri-Score, play a crucial role in promoting healthy diets and raising consumer awareness. Our study aimed to gather the opinions of Polish experts on the Nutri-Score and its relation to an ideal information system. We conducted a Poland-wide expert opinion study using a cross-sectional design survey with 75 participants, who had an average of 18±13 years of experience and were mainly employed at medical and agricultural universities. The data were collected with CAWI method. The results showed that the most important features of an FOPL system were clarity, simplicity, consistency with healthy eating recommendations, and the ability to objectively compare products within the same group. While more than half of the respondents believed that the Nutri-Score provides an overall assessment of a product’s nutritional value and facilitates quick purchasing decisions, it falls short in helping consumers compose a balanced diet and cannot be applied to all product groups. The experts also expressed concerns about the system’s ability to account for a product’s degree of processing, full nutritional value and carbon footprint. In conclusion, Poland’s current labelling system needs expansion, but the Nutri-Score requires significant and deep changes and validation against national guidelines and expert expectations before implementation.

This paper provides a concise review of remote sensing of ocean fronts and its applications in marine ecology and fisheries, with a particular focus on the most popular front detection algorithms/techniques: Canny (1986), Cayula and Cornillon (1990, 1992, 1995), Miller (2004, 2009), Shimada et al. (2005), Belkin and O’Reilly (2009), and Nieto et al. (2012). A case is made for feature-based approach in marine ecology and fisheries that emphasizes fronts as major structural and circulation features of the ocean realm that play key roles in various aspects of marine ecology.

Tumor to stroma ratio is a highly debated prognostic factor in the management of several solid tumors and there is no universal agreement on its practicality. In our study we proposed to confirm or dismiss the hypothesis that a simple measurement of stroma quantity is an easy-to-use and strong prognostic tool. We have included 74 consecutive patients with colorectal cancer who underwent primary curative abdominal surgery. The tumors have been grouped into stroma-poor (stroma <10%), medium-stroma (between 10 and 50%) and stroma-rich (over 50%). The proportion of tumor stroma ranged from 5% to 70% with a median of 25%. Very few, only 6.8% of patients had stroma-rich tumors, 4% stroma-poor tumors and 89.2%tumors with a medium quantity of stroma. The proportion of stroma, at any cut-off, had no statistically significant influence on the disease specific survival. This can be explained by the low proportion of stroma-rich tumors in our patient group and the inverse correlation of stroma proportion with tumor grade. The real-life proportion of stroma-rich tumors and the complex nature of the stroma-tumor interaction has to be further elucidated.

Very heavy stratiform precipitation (> 200 mm/per day) occurred in the Hokitika region on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand on 18 June 2015, under north-westerlies with small CAPE (< 25 J/kg). Analyses of model simulations and observations showed that this heavy rainfall was due to cold front lifting enhanced by orographic lifting over the Southern Alps. At 1.5 km grid-length, the model terrain underestimated the average height of the 103 tallest mountains over the South Island by ~ 800 m. This leads to weaker orographic lifting and mountain blocking, and a faster-moving and stronger cold front in the Hokitika region. As a result, large errors in the heavy rainfall prediction occur. By increasing either the resolved or the sub-grid mountain heights, the simulated rainfall errors were largely reduced through stronger orographic lifting and mountain blocking, and a better simulation of the cold front movement and strength. All the experiments have the same “flow-over” regime with mountain waves and/or wave breaking (Fm ranges 0.61 – 1.21). However, the rainfall amount and distribution on the windward side of mountains altered significantly. Our new findings were that the Southern Alps can have significant indirect effects on heavy rainfall by altering the speed and strength of the cold front, in addition to the well-known direct dynamical effects (i.e., orographic lifting and mountain blocking). A combination of these direct and indirect effects makes the heavy rainfall simulation sensitive to mountain heights even under the same “flow-over” regime.

This paper combines a literature survey and data analysis. The literature on the Subtropical Front (STF) in the Southern Ocean is reviewed with a two-pronged emphasis on the double-front structure of the STF, hence the existence of a subtropical frontal zone (STFZ), and the circumpolar continuity of the STFZ. The data analysis is based on the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) sections. The STFZ is detected along each section independently from other sections, while moving circum-polarly downstream (eastward). The literature survey and data analysis confirm the circumpolar continuity of the STFZ extending from the Brazil Current across the South Atlantic, South Indian, and South Pacific up to Chile, being bound by the North and South STF. The circumpolar continuity of the STFZ is partly interrupted by South Africa and Tasmania, where the North STF ceases, while the South STF continues eastward. The South Atlantic STFZ is the southern boundary of the well-defined Subtropical Mode Water (STMW) thermostad, which cools eastward from 15°C to 11°C between the Brazil Current and Greenwich Meridian. In the southeast Pacific, the STFZ is the southern boundary of the 17-to-19°C thermostad (South Pacific Eastern STMW). The STFZ’s vertical extent is at maximum in the South Atlantic (>1000 m), decreasing eastward to 300 m in the southeast Pacific off Chile. A special attention is given to the South Pacific and the STFZ’s role in the ecology of Chilean jack mackerel Trachurus murphyi that spawn at the STFZ and migrate along the STFZ from Chile up to New Zealand.

High-resolution (2 km) high-frequency (hourly) SST data from 2015-2020 provided by the Advanced Himawari Imager (AHI) onboard the Japanese Himawari-8 geostationary satellite positioned over 140.7°E were used to study spatial and temporal variability of the China Coastal Front (CCF) in the East China Sea. The hourly SST data were processed with the Belkin and O’Reilly (2009) algorithm to generate long-term mean monthly maps of SST gradient magnitude (GM) and frontal frequency (FM) using a GM threshold of 0.1°C/km. Horizontal structure of SST field in the vicinity of the CCF was investigated from cross-frontal distributions of SST along 8 parallels from 31°N to 24°N. The high resolution (2 km) monthly distributions of SST along these 8 parallels were used to determine inshore and offshore boundaries of the CCF and calculate the CCF strength defined as the total cross-frontal SST step dSST=Offshore SST – Inshore SST. The CCF emerges in November, fully develops in December and peaks in strength in January-February. The front’s fragmentation and shrinking/weakening begins in February and March, respectively. In winter (December-February), the front’s strength dSST exceeds 5°C offshore the Zhejiang-Fujian coast and could be as high as 7.5°C when nearshore waters cool down to 7°C. In winter, the front’s strength decreases downstream from 31°N to 24°N. The CCF changes its physical nature as the seasons progress. In winter, the CCF is a water mass front between cold and fresh water coming from the north and warm and salty water coming from the south. In summer, the CCF becomes a coastal upwelling front maintained largely by southerly winds. In winter, the CCF’s cross-frontal structure in the SST field is ramp-shaped, with SST increasing monotonously in the offshore direction. In summer, the CCF’s cross-frontal structure in the SST field is V-shaped or U-shaped, featuring a minimum SST formed by cold upwelled water at some distance from the shore. Thus, the summer SST structure effectively consists of two fronts, a nearshore and offshore, with a minimum SST in-between. Across the inshore/offshore front, the SST decreases/increases in the offshore direction. The local bathymetry, especially the relatively steep shelf slope between 20-m and 50-m isobath, steers the front, which does not meander in winter offshore the Zhejiang-Fujian coast. As the cold season progresses, the front’s axis gradually shifts into deeper waters, from ~20 m to ~50 m.

The aim of innovations in road safety is to contribute to better protection of road users and to minimize damage to their property. The main objective of the article is to identify disparities in the perception of an innovation element in road safety by road users based on their type of employment and the number of kilometers driven per year. The research will evaluate the attitudes of selected groups of road users based on the number of kilometers driven in a calendar year and whether driving a motor vehicle is their main job duty. The analysis involved 239 respondents using a paper questionnaire. Disparities in the perception of innovations in road safety were evaluated using contingency tables, chi-square tests, non-parametric tests, and Cramer's V. Road users feel much safer with a front braking light when crossing traffic of vehicles and pedestrians (71%); at pedestrian crossings (74%); when turning left (63.4%); as well as when crossing traffic of multiple vehicles (62.5%). Disparities among respondents based on the type of employment of the road user were not confirmed. Conversely, road users with a higher number of kilometers driven per year have a more positive perception of the innovation element at pedestrian crossings.

Monochromatic documents claim for much less computer bandwidth for network transmission and storage space than their color or even grayscale equivalent. The binarization of historical documents is far more complex than recent ones as paper aging, color, texture, translucidity, stains, back-to-front interference, kind and color of ink used in handwritting, printing process, digitalization process, etc. are some of the factors that affect binarization. This article presents a new binarization algorithm for historical documents. The new global filter proposed is performed in four steps: filtering the image using a bilateral filter, splitting image into the RGB components, decision-making for each RGB channel based on an adaptive binarization method inspired by Otsu's method with a choice of the threshold level, and classification of the binarized images to decide which of the RGB components best preserved the document information in the foreground. The quantitative and qualitative assessment made with 21 binarization algorithms in three sets of “real world” documents showed very good results.

CO2 flooding stands as a pivotal technique for significantly enhancing oil recovery in low-permeability reservoirs. The movement and sweeping rules at the front of CO2 flooding play a critical role in its oil recovery, yet a comprehensive quantitative analysis remains an area in need of refinement. In this study, we have developed 1D and 2D numerical simulation models to explore the sweeping behavior of miscible, immiscible, and partly-miscible CO2 flooding patterns. The front position and movement rules of the three CO2 flooding patterns are determined. A novel approach of the contour area calculation method is introduced to quantitatively characterize the sweep coefficients, and the sweeping rules are discussed regarding geological parameters, oil viscosity, and injection-production parameters. Furthermore, the Random Forest (RF) algorithm is employed to identify the controlling factor of the sweep coefficient, as determined by out-of-bag (OOB) data displacement analysis. The results show that the miscible front is located at the point of maximum CO2 content in the oil phase. The immiscible front occurs at the point of maximum interfacial tension near the production well. Remarkably, the immiscible front moves at a faster rate compared to the miscible front. Geological parameters, including porosity, permeability, and reservoir thickness, significantly impact the gravity segregation effect, thereby influencing the CO2 sweep coefficient. Immiscible flooding exhibits the highest degree of gravity segregation, with a maximum gravity segregation degree (GSD) reaching 78.1. The permeability ratio is a crucial factor, with a lower limit of approximately 5.0 for reservoirs suitable for CO2 flooding. Injection-production parameters also play a pivotal role in sweep coefficient. Decreased well spacing and increased gas injection rates are found to enhance sweep coefficients by suppressing gravity segregation. Additionally, higher gas injection rates can improve the miscibility degree of partly-miscible flooding from 0.69 to 1.0. Oil viscosity proves to be a significant factor influencing the sweep coefficients, with high seepage resistance due to increasing oil viscosity dominating the miscible and partly-miscible flooding patterns. Conversely, gravity segregation primarily governs the sweep coefficient in immiscible flooding. In terms of controlling factors, the permeability ratio emerges as a paramount influence, with a factor importance value (FI) reaching 1.04. these results provide a theoretical foundation for the application of CO2 flooding, enhancing the understanding of the critical factors governing its success.

Influenced by the quasi-stationary Mei-yu front and the development of mesoscale low vortices on the Mei-yu front, a torrential rain event occurred in Suzhou on July 6, 2020. The 24-hour rainfall recorded by the automatic station exceeded 200 millimeters, with the highest hourly intensity surpassing 70 millimeters, accompanied by thunderstorms and strong winds. This heavy precipitation process was characterized by suddenness, extremity, long duration, high precipitation efficiency, and backward propagation. Using various data sources such as the European ERA5 reanalysis data, ground-based automatic stations, sounding, Doppler weather radar, and wind profile radar, this paper analyzed in detail the circulation characteristics and radar echo structures of this torrential rain event, and further studied the triggering, feature evolution, and maintenance mechanisms of the heavy precipitation.The results show: (1) The continuously strengthening low-level jet stream propagates downward forming an ultra-low-level jet stream. Heavy precipitation is located on the left front side of the jet exit area, where strong convergence and lifting in the boundary layer overlap with the ascending branch of the secondary circulation above the shear line, resulting in heavy precipitation. (2) A supercell storm with intense precipitation produced this heavy rainfall event, characterized by a low centroid of strong echo; echo-free vault, bounded weak echo region, and other supercell structural features. During this event, the high reflectivity factor areas corresponded to high KDP value areas, indicating a large amount of liquid water content. Vertically, the KDP column can track the rainwater mixing ratio well, and its location corresponds to the vicinity of the short-term heavy precipitation occurrence. The high KDP value area mainly consists of numerous precipitation particles, and the vertical vortex wind field structure causes rapid growth of precipitation particles through continuous rolling. Furthermore, it can be found through correlation coefficients (CC) that there are always high-value areas for CC since they correspond to areas of intense precipitation. (3) Continuous triggering of mesoscale convective cloud clusters on the east-west ground convergence line leads to new development and forms a "train effect." Strong frontogenesis in both horizontal and vertical directions triggers and sustains this heavy precipitation event. The significant increase in liquid water and water vapor density has indicative significance for the occurrence of heavy precipitation.

The Subtropical Front (STF) plays a key role in the ecology of Chilean jack mackerel Trachurus murphyi. Nonetheless, there are few remote sensing studies of the STF in the open Southeast Pacific Ocean, and almost all of them have been conducted by satellite oceanographers in Russia and Ukraine to support respective large-scale fisheries of jack mackerel in this region. We reviewed these studies that documented long-term seasonal and interannual variability of the STF from sea surface temperature (SST) and sea surface height (SSH) data. We also mapped the STF from satellite sea surface salinity (SSS) data of the SMOS mission (2012-2019). The Subtropical Front consists of two fronts -- North and South STF about 500 km apart -- that border the Subtropical Frontal Zone (STFZ) in-between. The STF is density-compensated, with spatially divergent manifestations in temperature and salinity. In the temperature field, the STF extends in the WNW to ESE direction in the Southeast Pacific. In the salinity field, the STFZ appears as a broad frontal zone, extending zonally between 30-35°S across the entire South Pacific. Three major types of satellite data – SST, SSH, and SSS – can be used to locate the STF. The SSH data is most advantageous with regard to the jack mackerel fisheries owing to the all-weather capability of satellite altimetry and the radical improvement of the spatial resolution of SSH data in the near future. Despite the dearth of dedicated in situ studies of the South Pacific STFZ, there is a broad consensus regarding the STFZ being the principal spawning and nursing ground of T. murphyi as well as a major migration corridor between Chile and New Zealand.

This review will serve as an entry point for international researchers who would like to tap into the vast scientific potential of Chinese-language literature on oceanic fronts. We focused on observational studies in descriptive physical oceanography of marine fronts. A thorough bibliographic search netted 93 papers published in 1982-2023, with a sharp increase of the total number of papers after 2010. This trend continued unabated through the early 2020s. Regionally, the overwhelming majority of papers is focused on the China Seas, particularly the East China Seas (Bohai, Huanghai, and Donghai, especially the Yangtze River Plume) and northern South China Sea (Guangdong Shelf). Elsewhere, a number of papers were dedicated to the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic. Thematically, papers on remote sensing of ocean fronts dominate, with special attention to the development of new advanced front-detection algorithms applied to satellite data on sea surface temperature and chlorophyll. Numerous papers on marine fronts in the China Seas present important results that have to be considered by international researchers. Overall, this review emphasizes the significant contributions made by Chinese oceanographers, particularly to the frontal oceanography of the China Seas.

Recent literature has seen a rapid expansion in the reference to front-end forensics as an indication of the untapped value of forensic science. While some of these contributions have centered on development of forensic intelligence from a single area of investigation, others call for a more fundamental change in the relationship between crime laboratories and policing, particularly relating early laboratory analysis with big datasets to provide leads to investigators. We highlight several recently implemented tactical strategies of crime laboratories that contribute to the body of forensic intelligence. Beyond the scientific gains from these tactical applications, the corresponding details on associated efficiencies, costs, time savings, and quality improvements offer insights towards patterns of success for the community of crime laboratories. Further details expand an interpretation of what constitutes success with an eye on the contributions of the crime laboratory towards public health, safety, and protection of the innocent in addition to societal gains from conviction of the guilty. The economic interpretation of the value provided by the forensic laboratory assists in the cost-benefit review of strategic and tactical decisions and supports the justification for laboratory public funding with measures of the return on investment from public support of the forensic laboratory

Lyme disease is a growing public health problem in Québec. Its emergence over the last decade is caused by environmental and anthropological factors that favour the survival of Ixodes scapularis, the vector of Lyme disease transmission. The objective of this study was to estimate the speed and direction of Lyme disease emergence in Québec and to identify spatiotemporal risk patterns. A surface trend analysis was conducted to estimate the speed and direction of its emergence based upon the first detected case of Lyme disease in each municipality in Québec since 2004. A cluster analysis was also conducted to identify at-risk regions across space and time. These analyses were reproduced for the date of disease onset and date of notification for each case of Lyme disease. It was estimated that Lyme disease is spreading northward in Québec at a speed varying between 18 and 32 km/year according to the date of notification and the date of disease onset, respectively. A high rate of disease risk was found in seven clusters identified in the south-west of Québec in the sociosanitary regions of Montérégie and Estrie. The results obtained in this study improve our understanding of the spatiotemporal patterns of Lyme disease in Québec, which can be used for proactive, targeted interventions by public and clinical health authorities.

Nowadays, the wasting of resources is one of the fundamental challenges of the industrial sector. The rectangle packing problem can be very effective in this context. Practical applications of this issue in the timing and designing of the industries and businesses are very remarkable. The purpose of this issue is to arrange a set of rectangles with specific dimensions in a rectangular page with a specific width and unlimited height without overlapping. The fundamental challenge in this issue is that this is an NP-complete issue. Therefore, it is difficult to achieve the best arrangement, which has the maximum rate of resource utilization and also has a linear running time. Many algorithms have been presented to estimate a practical solution for this issue. In the past decades, the best fit method has been one of the most useful methods for this purpose. This study presents a combinatorial algorithm based on two algorithms, including the lowest front-line strategy and the best-fit algorithm. The running results indicate that the suggested algorithm performs well, despite its simplicity. The time complexity of the suggested algorithm is O(nm), in which n is the number of input rectangles and m is the number of the created front lines.

Insulation systems for the floor, roof and external walls play a prominent role in providing a thermal barrier for the building envelope. Design decisions made for the insulation material type and thickness can alleviate potential impacts on the embodied energy and improve the building thermal performance. This design problem is often addressed using a BIM-integrated optimisation approach. However, one major weakness lies in the current studies is that BIM is merely used as the source for design parameters input. This study proposes a BIM-based envelope insulation optimisation design framework using a common software Revit to find the trade-off between the total embodied energy of the insulation system and the thermal performance of the envelope by considering the material type and thickness. In addition, the framework also permits data visualisation in a BIM environment, and subsequent material library mapping together with instantiating the optimal insulation designs. The framework is tested on a case study based in Sydney, Australia. By analysing sample designs from the Pareto front, it is found that slight improvement in the thermal performance (1.3399 to 1.2112 GJ/m2) would cause the embodied energy to increase by more than 50 times.

The QCD Lagrangian is based on quark and gluonic fields -- not squarks nor gluinos. However, one can show that its hadronic eigensolutions conform to a representation of superconformal algebra, reflecting the underlying conformal symmetry of chiral QCD. The eigensolutions of superconformal algebra provide a unified Regge spectroscopy of meson, baryon, and tetraquarks of the same parity and twist as equal-mass members of the same 4-plet representation with a universal Regge slope. The predictions from light-front holography and superconformal algebra can also be extended to mesons, baryons, and tetraquarks with strange, charm and bottom quarks. % The pion $q \bar q$ eigenstate has zero mass for $m_q=0.$ % % A key tool is the remarkable observation of de Alfaro, Fubini, and Furlan (dAFF) which shows how a mass scale can appear in the Hamiltonian and the equations of motion while retaining the conformal symmetry of the action. When one applies the dAFF procedure to chiral QCD, a mass scale $\kappa$ appears which determines universal Regge slopes, hadron masses in the absence of the Higgs coupling. One also predicts the form of the nonperturbative QCD running coupling: $\alpha_s(Q^2) \propto e^{-{Q^2/4 \kappa^2}}$, in agreement with the effective charge determined from measurements of the Bjorken sum rule. One also obtains viable predictions for spacelike and timelike hadronic form factors, structure functions, distribution amplitudes, and transverse momentum distributions. % The combination of conformal symmetry, light-front dynamics, its holographic mapping to AdS$_5$ space, and the dAFF procedure thus provide new insights, not only into the physics underlying color confinement, but also the nonperturbative QCD coupling and the QCD mass scale.

A semi-analytical approach is developed for predicting pyrolysis front temperature in a solid undergoing thermal decomposition. The pre-reaction heating stage is described using an analytical formulation and invoking the concept of thermal penetration depth. The solution for the solid conversion stage accounts for decomposition enthalpy, convective flow of volatiles, and a reaction front characterized by a uniform temperature that progresses toward the inner layers. This method incorporates empirical relations into the analytical model. Two scenarios are considered. First, the solution of the pyrolysis model combined with the data of conversion time versus external heat flux leads to an algebraic expression that reveals the existence of a maximum pyrolysis-front temperature. Explicit relations are derived for both the extremum pyrolysis temperature and optimum applied heat flux. In the second case, an expression is derived for the ignition temperature of a solid fuel by incorporating ignition delay time measurements into the heating stage model. The newly derived expression allows to describe the ignition temperature as a function of the Biot number and external heat flux. The relation obtained for the ignition temperature explains the experimental trends reported in some previous studies where two local extremums were observed for the ignition temperature in the absence of volatiles reactions.

We observed and studied the phenomenon of the redox front propagation in different polyaniline (PAni) deposited samples interfaced with liquid or solid polymeric electrolyte. The front of electrochemical conversion, in which the insulator and the conductor parts of PAni are interfaced, is studied observing the temporal evolution of the conductivity of PAni samples. The propagation of redox front was studied in electrochemically obtained thick (2 µm) and in thin (50 nm) poly-aniline films, obtained using Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) method. In the configuration that we tested, the speed of the red-ox front propagation for the thin LB films was found to be 200 micron/sec opening the way for the manufacturing large neural networks, realized using PAni based memristive devices, in which the memristance can be quickly changed in the programmable manner. The prototypes of the spiking neuron connections were manufactured on the basis of lithographically developed gold contacts, bridged by electrochemically grown polyaniline and placed under polymer electrolyte layer with only one counter electrode (gate) for the whole manifold of pseudo-two-terminal memristor bridges. The spike propagation was studied in such gold-polyaniline systems. The research opens the possibility of miniature spike or rate-based neural network circuits manufacture, based on metal pads and polyaniline.

The continuous and precise mapping of glacier calving fronts is essential for monitoring and understanding rapid glacier changes in Antarctica and Greenland, which have the potential for significant sea level rise within the current century. This effort has been mostly restricted to the slow and painstaking manual digitalization of the calving front positions in thousands of satellite imagery products. Here, we have developed a machine learning toolkit to robustly and automatically detect glacier calving front margins in satellite imagery. The toolkit is based on semantic image segmentation using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) with a modified U-Net architecture to isolate the calving fronts from satellite images after having been trained with a dataset of images and their corresponding manually-determined calving fronts. As a case study we train our neural network on a varied set Landsat images with lowered resolutions from Jakobshavn, Sverdrup, and Kangerlussuaq glaciers, Greenland and test the results on novel images from Helheim glacier, Greenland to evaluate the performance of the approach. The neural network is able to identify the calving front in new images with a mean deviation of 96.3 m from the true fronts, equivalent to 1.97 pixels on average, while the corresponding error for manually-determined fronts on the same resolution images is 92.5 m. We find that the trained neural network significantly outperforms common edge detection techniques, and can be used to continuously map out calving-ice fronts with a variety of data products.

The known three-component reaction-diffusion system modeling competition and co-existence of different language speakers is under study. A modification of this system is proposed, which is examined by Lie symmetry method; furthermore exact solutions in the form of traveling fronts are constructed and their properties are identified. Plots of the traveling fronts are presented and the relevant interpretation describing the language shift occurred in Ukraine during the Soviet times is suggested

The incorporation of renewable energy into power systems poses serious challenges to the transmission and distribution power system operators (TSOs and DSOs). To fully leverage these resources there is a need for a new market design with improved coordination between TSOs and DSOs. In this paper we propose two coordination schemes between TSOs and DSOs: one centralised and another decentralised that facilitate the integration of distributed based generation; minimise operational cost; relieve congestion; and promote a sustainable system. To this end, we approximate the power equations with linearised equations so that the resulting optimal power flows (OPFs) in both the TSO and DSO become convex optimisation problems. In the resulting decentralised scheme, the TSO and DSO collaborate to optimally allocate all resources in the system. In particular, we propose an iterative bi-level optimisation technique where the upper level is the TSO that solves its own OPF and determines the locational marginal prices at substations. We demonstrate numerically that the algorithm converges to a near optimal solution. We study the interaction of TSOs and DSOs and the existence of any conflicting objectives with the centralised scheme. More specifically, we approximate the Pareto front of the multi-objective optimal power flow problem where the entire system, i.e., transmission and distribution systems, is modelled. The proposed ideas are illustrated through a five bus transmission system connected with distribution systems, represented by the IEEE 33 and 69 bus feeders.

A severe flash flood hit Luwu, Sulawesi, Indonesia, on 13 July 2020. This flood was preceded by persistent heavy rainfall from 11 to 13 July 2020. In this study, we explore both the physical and dynamical processes that caused the heavy rainfall using a convection-permitting model with 1-km resolution. The heavy rainfall was modulated by the development of a pair of Mesoscale Convective Complexes (MCCs) during the night. The pair of MCCs was triggered by an anti-cyclonic vorticity anomaly over the Makassar Strait and was maintained by the warm front passing between the sea and land over central Sulawesi. This front was characterized by moist-warm and cold-dry low-level air, which may have helped to extend the lifetime of the MCCs. The northwestward propagation of the MCCs was due to the interaction between predominantly southeasterly monsoon and sea surface temperature anomalies.

This work presents a heat transfer and boiling model that computes the evolution of the temperature field in a representative steel workpiece quenched from 850 or 930°C by immersion in water flowing at average velocities of 0.2 or 0.6 m/s, respectively. Under these conditions, all three boiling regimes were present during cooling: stable vapor film, nucleate boiling, and single-phase convection. The model was based on the numerical solution of the heat conduction equation coupled to the solution of the energy and momentum equations for water. The mixture phase approach was adopted using the Lee model to compute the rates of water evaporation-condensation. Heat flux at the wall was calculated for all regimes using a single semi-mechanistic model. Therefore, evolution of boiling regimes at every position on the wall surface was automatically determined. Predictions were validated using laboratory results, namely: a) Videorecording the upward motion of the wetting front along the workpiece wall surface, and b) cooling curves obtained with embedded thermocouples in the steel probe. Wall heat flux calculations were used to determine the importance of the simultaneous presence of all three boiling regimes on the heat flux distribution. It was found that this simultaneous presence leads to high heat flux variations that should be avoided in production lines.

The recent growing attention to energy saving and environmental protection issues has brought to attention the possibility of exploiting syngas from gasification of biomass and coal for the firing of industrial plants included the so called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle ones. In order to improve the knowledge about the employ of syngas in lean premixed turbulent flames, a large scale swirl stabilized gas-turbine burner has been operated with a simplified model of H₂ enriched syngas from coal gasification. The experimental campaign has been performed at atmospheric pressure with operating conditions derived from scaling the real gas turbines ones. The results are here reported and consist of OH-PLIF measurements carried out at decreasing air equivalence ratio conditions and are analysed together with the mean aerodynamic characterisation of the burner flowfield in isothermal condition. The OH concentration distributions have been analysed statistically in order to obtain information about the location of the most reactive zones and an algorithm has been applied to the data in order to identify the flame fronts. In addition, the flame front locations have been successively interpreted statistically in order to obtain information about their main features and about their dependence on the air to fuel ratio behaviour.

Abstract: The recent growing attention to energy saving and environmental protection issues has brought to attention the possibility of exploiting syngas from gasification of biomass and coal for the firing of industrial plants included the so called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle ones. In order to acquire a detailed knowledge about the behaviour of lean turbulent premixed flames, the present work resent the results of an experimental characterisation of a prototypical gas turbine burner operated at atmospheric pressure at condition scaled from real gas turbines ones. The results here presented derive from OH-PLIF measurements carried out at decreasing air equivalence ratio conditions and are analysed together with a mean aerodynamic characterisation of the burner operating in isothermal condition. The OH concentration distributions have been analysed statistically in order to obtain information about the location of the most reactive zones and an algorithm has been applied to the data sets in order to identify the flame fronts. In addition, the flame front locations have been successively interpreted statistically in order to obtain information about their main features and about their dependence on the air to fuel ratio behaviour.

The present article seeks to analyse the period 1938-1940, when the Romanian interwar democracy was suspended through the promulgation of the anti-liberal Constitution of 27 February 1938. The Constitution abolished the political parties and trade unions, replacing them with new institutions established according to royal decrees: the royal single party, known as the National Renaissance Front (Frontul Renaşterii Naţionale, FRN) and corporations of workers and employers, respectively. Starting from that moment, the regime, through its representatives, made recourse to a nationalist rhetoric directed against the democratic parliamentary system. Moreover, a cult of personality of the monarch can be identified in the speeches of the royal corporatist ‘parliament’, as well as in the doctrine of FRN and the Nation’s Party (its successor), but also in the regime’s youth organisation, ‘The Country’s Sentinel’ (Straja Ţării), whose First Sentinel was the authoritarian monarch himself. Thus, the cult of personality of Carol II represented one of the sources of inspiration for the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu and for the leaders of this totalitarian regime.

The residential built form, including open space, provides the physical environment for social interaction. Understanding urban open space, including semi-public and public domains, through the lens of physical accessibility and visual permeability can potentially facilitate the building of a sense of community contributing to a better quality of life. Using an inner-city suburb in Perth, Western Australia as a case study, this research explores the importance of physical accessibility patterns and visual permeability for socialising in semi-public and public domains, such as the front yard and the residential streets. It argues that maintaining a balance between public and private inter-relationship in inner city residential neighbourhoods is important for creating and maintaining a sense of community.

Active front-end (AFE) rectifiers have been becoming widely employed in power systems to achieve unity power factor and harmonic mitigations. The typical modeling approaches applied for AFE rectifiers in the literature mostly relied on two baselines named the detailed model and the time average model. The former approach deals with the switching element model (SEM) leads to significant harmonics in currents with distorted waveforms. The latter approach uses the average-value model (AVM) to overcome the currents’ harmonics as well as provide fast responses. However, even the AVM baseline has contained problems during the starting stage (lack of control signals) and over the dead-time periods which causes serious issues in the implementation process. This paper presents an improved dynamic AVM for AFE rectifiers by precisely considering the issues mentioned above along with the practical starting procedure and desirable initialization. The studied AFE rectifier is developed using the voltage-oriented control (VOC) technique based on the different modeling methodologies including SEM, Conventional AVM, and the proposed AVM. The performance of all models is analyzed and compared using simulation results with MATLAB/Simulink R2023a Function blocks for all the algorithm parts and SimScape elements for the electrical circuit model. The simulation results illustrate that the performance of the proposed AVM approach can closely resemble the behavior of the SEM baseline with low harmonic distortion.

Urbanization influences food culture, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where there is an increasing consumption of processed and pre-packaged foods. This shift is contributing to a rise in non-communicable diseases. Food labeling standards are crucial for regulating manufacturing practices and aiding consumers in making healthy food choices. We aimed to assess the compliance of local and imported pre-packaged snacks with Tanzanian and international labeling standards in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. A cross-sectional study was conducted on 180 snack products. A checklist based on Tanzanian and Codex labeling standards was used to evaluate adherence. We also examined factors influencing adherence, such as product origin, price, category, purchase location, and package size. The majority of the snacks demonstrated partial adherence to labeling standards. Imported products showed significantly better full adherence to both Tanzanian and International standards. Notably, over half of the products used English for labeling, and infrequently used the recommended World Health Organization Front-of-Pack nutrition Labeling. Product category, origin, and package size were significantly associated with higher levels of International standard adherence (p<0.05). The inadequate adherence to mandatory labeling standards, scarce use of Swahili and FoPL highlight the need to strengthen labeling practices and potential challenges faced by consumers in understanding nutritional information. Thus, strengthening and emphasizing good labeling practices is of urgency as we seek to address diet-related Non-communicable diseases.

This scoping review investigated how consumers perceive and interpret serving size information on food packages. A search of seven databases (2010 to September 2017) was followed by title and abstract screening, with relevant articles assessed for eligibility in full-text. Fourteen studies met inclusion criteria, with relevant data extracted by one reviewer and checked for consistency by a second reviewer. Five studies reported poor understanding of nutrition facts labelling and portion size, with information to ‘benchmark’ serving size against reported as helpful in two studies. Consumer attitudes towards serving size labelling were measured in six studies and identified that serving size information was interpreted as indicative of nutrient intake regardless of portion size recommendations. Increased labelled serving sizes resulted in increased portion sizes in three studies, with three studies reporting the opposite or neutral effect for discretionary food portion sizes. The influence of labelled serving size on consumer attitudes and consumption is complex and sometimes counterintuitive. As labelled serving size can impact on consumption, any changes may result in unintended public health consequences. The effects of labelled serving size format changes should be tested carefully within experimental and ecological contexts and accompanied by tailored, comprehensive and serving size-specific food literacy initiatives.

The article is devoted to the analytical and numerical study of the pattern of propagation and attenuation, due to Coulomb friction, of shear waves in an infinite thin elastic plate with a circular orifice of radius lying on a rough base. In the field of motion, an exact analytical solution of a nonlinear boundary value problem for tangential stresses and transversal velocities is obtained in quadratures by the method of Laplace transformations. It turned out that the complete exhaustion of the wave front of a strong rupture occurs at a finite distance from the center of the hole and an elementary formula is given for this distance (the case of tangential forces instantly applied to the orifice boundary, and then constant in time, is considered). For various ratios of the magnitude of the limiting friction force to the amplitude of the applied load, the trailing wave fronts are obtained, after which a state of static equilibrium between the elastic and friction forces with a nonlinear distribution of residual deformations is established in the region .

Ultrasonic sensors are inexpensive and can take measurements with high accuracy, even with simple hardware configurations, so they are used in various fields. When multiple ultrasonic sensors exist in the measurement space, crosstalk occurs due to other nodes, which causes measurement errors. Crosstalk includes not only receiving homogeneous signals from other nodes, but also overlap by other signals, and interference by heterogeneous signals. This paper proposes a method that uses frequency sweep keying modulation to be robust against overlap and a faster region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNN)-based demodulator to reduce the interference caused by heterogeneous signals. The demodulator works by training faster R-CNN with the spectrograms of various received signals and classifying the received signals using a faster R-CNN. Experiments implementing an ultrasonic crosstalk environment showed that compared to on-off keying (OOK), phase-shift keying (PSK), and frequency-shift keying (FSK), the proposed method can implement CDMA even with shorter codes, and is robust against overlap. Compared to correlation-based frequency sweep keying, the time-of-flight error was reduced by approximately 75%. While existing demodulators did not consider heterogeneous signals, the proposed method ignored approximately 99% of the OOK and PSK signals, and approximately 79% of the FSK signals. The proposed method performs better than the existing methods and is expected to be used in various applications.

We reviewed various physical and biological manifestations of an unprecedented large-scale water temperature anomaly that emerged in the Northeast Pacific in late 2013. The anomaly dubbed “The Blob” persisted through 2014-2016, with some signs of its persistence through 2017-2018 and a possible reemergence in 2019. The tentative timeline of The Blob’s successive appearances around the Northeast Pacific is suggestive of its advection by currents around the Gulf of Alaska, along the Aleutians, into the Bering Sea, and eventually to the Bering Strait. During the initial phase of The Blob’s development in 2013-2014, advection along the Polar Front might have played a certain role. The extreme persistence and magnitude of The Blob resulted in numerous and sometimes dramatic ecosystem responses in the eastern Bering Sea. The multi-year duration of The Blob might have preconditioned the Bering Sea for the record low seasonal sea ice extent during the winter of 2017-2018 and disappearance of the cold pool in 2016 and 2018 that profoundly affected zooplankton, invertebrates, fishes, sea birds, and marine mammals. Comparison of time-series of population responses across trophic levels suggests that The Blob lowered primary production during spring, increasing small copepod production and jellyfish, and reducing energy transfer efficiently to higher trophic levels. While the Bering Sea’s water temperature, seasonal sea ice, and cold pool seem to return to the long-term mean state in 2022, it remains to be seen if the Bering Sea ecosystem will completely recover. The two most likely alternative scenarios envision either irreversible changes or hysteresis recovery.

In this paper, the active front-end (AFE) converter topology for the total harmonic distortion (THD) reduction in a wind energy system (WES) is used. A higher THD results in serious pulsations in the wind turbine (WT) output power and in several power losses at the WES. The AFE converter topology improves capability, efficiency and reliability in the energy conversion devices; by modifying a conventional back-to-back converter, from using a single voltage source converter (VSC) to use pVSC connected in parallel the AFE converter is generated. The THD reduction is done by applying a different phase shift angle at the carrier of digital sinusoidal pulse width modulation (DSPWM) switching signals of each VSC. To verify the functionality of the proposed methodology, the WES simulation in Matlab-Simulink® is analyzed, and the experimental laboratory tests using the concept of rapid control prototyping and the real-time simulator Opal-RT® Technologies is achieved. The obtained results show a type-4 WT with total output power of 6MVA, generating a THD reduction up to 5.5 times at the WES.

This review article is focused on the analysis of the state of the art of sensors for guided 9 ultrasonic waves for the detection and localization of impacts, therefore of interest for the structural 10 health monitoring (SHM). The recent developments in sensor technologies are then reported and 11 discussed through the many references in recent scientific literature. The physical phenomena re-12 lated to impact event and the main physical quantities are then introduced to discuss their im-13 portance in the development of the hardware and software components for SHM systems. An im-14 portant aspect of the article is the description of the different ultrasonic sensor technologies cur-15 rently present in the literature and what advantages and disadvantages they could bring, in relation 16 to the various phenomena investigated. In this context, the analysis of the front-end electronics is 17 deepened, the type of data transmission both in terms of wired and wireless technology and in terms 18 of online and offline signal processing. The integration aspects of sensors for the creation of net-19 works with autonomous nodes with the possibility of powering through energy harvesting devices 20 and the embedded processing capacity is also studied. Finally, the emerging sector of processing 21 techniques using deep learning and artificial intelligence concludes the review by indicating the 22 potential for the detection and autonomous characterization of the impacts.