scholarly journals Doping Sanctions in Sport: Knowledge and Perception of (Legal) Consequences of Doping—An Explorative Study in Austria

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (12) ◽  
pp. 603
Author(s):  
Cornelia Blank ◽  
Magdalena Flatscher-Thöni ◽  
Katharina Gatterer ◽  
Elisabeth Happ ◽  
Wolfgang Schobersberger ◽  
...  

Anti-doping rule violations (ADRVs) can lead to sports-related and legal sanctions, thus, being knowledgeable is important. Research into this knowledge and how athletes and their support personnel (ASP) perceive the control mechanisms and the appropriateness of (legal) sanctions is still scarce. This explorative study aimed to examine the knowledge and perception of existing (legal) sanctions in Austria, by distributing a questionnaire to Austrian athletes and ASP covering the topics of knowledge related to legal and sports-related consequences associated with a specific ADRV presented in a case study, their trust and satisfaction with specific agencies (based on the European Social Survey (ESS)) and perceived efficiency and effectiveness of the doping control system. Data were analyzed descriptively. All respondents (N = 59) agreed on a ban from sport to be appropriate. Knowledge about legal consequences and the trust in the judiciary and the sport governing bodies was moderate (6.82 out of 10). Perceived appropriate consequences were on average higher than the likely sanctions to be faced. Future prevention should include trust building measures in the institutions and the control system, improvement in terms of access to law and education for the target group and critical reflection on the existence of social norms. Furthermore, the implementation of risk management aspects should be part of future approaches.

2018 ◽  
pp. 60-67
Author(s):  
Henrika Pihlajaniemi ◽  
Anna Luusua ◽  
Eveliina Juntunen

This paper presents the evaluation of usersХ experiences in three intelligent lighting pilots in Finland. Two of the case studies are related to the use of intelligent lighting in different kinds of traffic areas, having emphasis on aspects of visibility, traffic and movement safety, and sense of security. The last case study presents a more complex view to the experience of intelligent lighting in smart city contexts. The evaluation methods, tailored to each pilot context, include questionnaires, an urban dashboard, in-situ interviews and observations, evaluation probes, and system data analyses. The applicability of the selected and tested methods is discussed reflecting the process and achieved results.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 52-58
Author(s):  
Sergey M. AFONIN ◽  

An electroelastic actuator for nanomechatronics is used in nanotechnology, adaptive optics, microsurgery, microelectronics, and biomedicine to actuate or control mechanisms, systems based on the electroelastic effect, and to convert electrical signals into mechanical displacements and forces. In nanomechatronic systems, a piezoactuator is used in scanning microscopy, laser systems, in astronomy for precision alignment, for compensation of temperature, gravitational deformations and atmospheric turbulence, focusing, and stabilizing the image. In this study, a condition for absolute stability of an electroelastic actuator control system for nanomechatronics under deterministic and random inputs is obtained. A number of equilibrium positions in an electroelastic actuator mechatronic control system are found, the totality of which is represented by a straight line segment. The electroelastic actuator’s deformation control system dead band relative width is determined for the actuator’s symmetric and asymmetric hysteresis characteristics. Under deterministic inputs and with fulfilling the condition for the derivative of the nonlinear hysteresis actuator deformation characteristic, the set of equilibrium positions of the electroelastic actuator control system for nanomechatronics is absolutely stable. Under random inputs, the system absolute stability with respect to the mathematical expectations of the electroelastic actuator mechatronic control system equilibrium positions has been determined subject to fulfilling the condition on the derivative of the actuator hysteresis characteristic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (7) ◽  
pp. 41-48
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Petreshin ◽  
Viktor Khandozhko ◽  
Andrey Dubov ◽  
German Dobrovolsky

The control system improvement of a machine-tool is considered. The necessity in control system updating is substantiated. There is shown a procedure for horizontal borer updating. A problem on adjustment of modern digital electrical feed drives is presented. A sample of electrical feed drive and NC device adjustment is presented.


Author(s):  
Harrison Togia ◽  
Oceana P. Francis ◽  
Karl Kim ◽  
Guohui Zhang

Hazards to roadways and travelers can be drastically different because hazards are largely dependent on the regional environment and climate. This paper describes the development of a qualitative method for assessing infrastructure importance and hazard exposure for rural highway segments in Hawai‘i under different conditions. Multiple indicators of roadway importance are considered, including traffic volume, population served, accessibility, connectivity, reliability, land use, and roadway connection to critical infrastructures, such as hospitals and police stations. The method of evaluating roadway hazards and importance can be tailored to fit different regional hazard scenarios. It assimilates data from diverse sources to estimate risks of disruption. A case study for Highway HI83 in Hawai‘i, which is exposed to multiple hazards, is conducted. Weakening of the road by coastal erosion, inundation from sea level rise, and rockfall hazards require adaptation solutions. By analyzing the risk of disruption to highway segments, adaptation approaches can be prioritized. Using readily available geographic information system data sets for the exposure and impacts of potential hazards, this method could be adapted not only for emergency management but also for planning, design, and engineering of resilient highways.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 4211
Author(s):  
Maciej Kozłowski ◽  
Andrzej Czerepicki ◽  
Piotr Jaskowski ◽  
Kamil Aniszewski

Urban traffic can be curbed in various ways, for instance, by introducing paid unguarded parking zones (PUPZ). The operational functionality of this system depends on whether or not the various system features used to document parking cases function properly, including those which enable positioning of vehicles parked in the PUPZ, recognition of plate numbers, event time recording, and the correct anonymisation of persons and other vehicles. The most fundamental problem of this system is its reliability, understood as the conformity of control results with the actual state of matters. This characteristic can be studied empirically, and this article addresses the methodology proposed for such an examination, discussed against a case study. The authors have analysed the statistical dependence of the e-control system’s measurement errors based on operational data. The results of this analysis confirm the rationale behind the deployment of the e-control system under the implementation of the smart city concept in Warsaw.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 5826
Author(s):  
Evangelos Axiotis ◽  
Andreas Kontogiannis ◽  
Eleftherios Kalpoutzakis ◽  
George Giannakopoulos

Ethnopharmacology experts face several challenges when identifying and retrieving documents and resources related to their scientific focus. The volume of sources that need to be monitored, the variety of formats utilized, and the different quality of language use across sources present some of what we call “big data” challenges in the analysis of this data. This study aims to understand if and how experts can be supported effectively through intelligent tools in the task of ethnopharmacological literature research. To this end, we utilize a real case study of ethnopharmacology research aimed at the southern Balkans and the coastal zone of Asia Minor. Thus, we propose a methodology for more efficient research in ethnopharmacology. Our work follows an “expert–apprentice” paradigm in an automatic URL extraction process, through crawling, where the apprentice is a machine learning (ML) algorithm, utilizing a combination of active learning (AL) and reinforcement learning (RL), and the expert is the human researcher. ML-powered research improved the effectiveness and efficiency of the domain expert by 3.1 and 5.14 times, respectively, fetching a total number of 420 relevant ethnopharmacological documents in only 7 h versus an estimated 36 h of human-expert effort. Therefore, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support the researcher can boost the efficiency and effectiveness of the identification and retrieval of appropriate documents.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Lei Jinyu ◽  
Liu Lei ◽  
Chu Xiumin ◽  
He Wei ◽  
Liu Xinglong ◽  
...  

Abstract The ship safety domain plays a significant role in collision risk assessment. However, few studies take the practical considerations of implementing this method in the vicinity of bridge-waters into account. Therefore, historical automatic identification system data is utilised to construct and analyse ship domains considering ship–ship and ship–bridge collisions. A method for determining the closest boundary is proposed, and the boundary of the ship domain is fitted by the least squares method. The ship domains near bridge-waters are constructed as ellipse models, the characteristics of which are discussed. Novel fuzzy quaternion ship domain models are established respectively for inland ships and bridge piers, which would assist in the construction of a risk quantification model and the calculation of a grid ship collision index. A case study is carried out on the multi-bridge waterway of the Yangtze River in Wuhan, China. The results show that the size of the ship domain is highly correlated with the ship's speed and length, and analysis of collision risk can reflect the real situation near bridge-waters, which is helpful to demonstrate the application of the ship domain in quantifying the collision risk and to characterise the collision risk distribution near bridge-waters.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 818
Author(s):  
Markus Reisenbüchler ◽  
Minh Duc Bui ◽  
Peter Rutschmann

Reservoir sedimentation is a critical issue worldwide, resulting in reduced storage volumes and, thus, reservoir efficiency. Moreover, sedimentation can also increase the flood risk at related facilities. In some cases, drawdown flushing of the reservoir is an appropriate management tool. However, there are various options as to how and when to perform such flushing, which should be optimized in order to maximize its efficiency and effectiveness. This paper proposes an innovative concept, based on an artificial neural network (ANN), to predict the volume of sediment flushed from the reservoir given distinct input parameters. The results obtained from a real-world study area indicate that there is a close correlation between the inputs—including peak discharge and duration of flushing—and the output (i.e., the volume of sediment). The developed ANN can readily be applied at the real-world study site, as a decision-support system for hydropower operators.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (22) ◽  
pp. 6672
Author(s):  
Rob Bemthuis ◽  
Maria-Eugenia Iacob ◽  
Paul Havinga

The sooner disruptive emergent behaviors are detected, the sooner preventive measures can be taken to ensure the resilience of business processes execution. Therefore, organizations need to prepare for emergent behaviors by embedding corrective control mechanisms, which help coordinate organization-wide behavior (and goals) with the behavior of local autonomous entities. Ongoing technological advances, brought by the Industry 4.0 and cyber-physical systems of systems paradigms, can support integration within complex enterprises, such as supply chains. In this paper, we propose a reference enterprise architecture for the detection and monitoring of emergent behaviors in enterprises. We focus on addressing the need for an adequate reaction to disruptions. Based on a systematic review of the literature on the topic of current architectural designs for understanding emergent behaviors, we distill architectural requirements. Our architecture is a hybrid as it combines distributed autonomous business logic (expressed in terms of simple business rules) and some central control mechanisms. We exemplify the instantiation and use of this architecture by means of a proof-of-concept implementation, using a multimodal logistics case study. The obtained results provide a basis for achieving supply chain resilience “by design”, i.e., through the design of coordination mechanisms that are well equipped to absorb and compensate for the effects of emergent disruptive behaviors.


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