Diffraction-Based Residual Stress Characterization in Laser Additive Manufacturing of Metals

Laser-based additive manufacturing methods allow the production of complex metal structures within a single manufacturing step. However, the localized heat input and the layer-wise manufacturing manner give rise to large thermal gradients. Therefore, large internal stress (IS) during the process (and consequently residual stress (RS) at the end of production) is generated within the parts. This IS or RS can either lead to distortion or cracking during fabrication or in-service part failure, respectively. With this in view, the knowledge on the magnitude and spatial distribution of RS is important to develop strategies for its mitigation. Specifically, diffraction-based methods allow the spatial resolved determination of RS in a non-destructive fashion. In this review, common diffraction-based methods to determine RS in laser-based additive manufactured parts are presented. In fact, the unique microstructures and textures associated to laser-based additive manufacturing processes pose metrological challenges. Based on the literature review, it is recommended to (a) use mechanically relaxed samples measured in several orientations as appropriate strain-free lattice spacing, instead of powder, (b) consider that an appropriate grain-interaction model to calculate diffraction-elastic constants is both material- and texture-dependent and may differ from the conventionally manufactured variant. Further metrological challenges are critically reviewed and future demands in this research field are discussed.

Development of ANPR Framework for Pakistani Vehicle Number Plates Using Object Detection and OCR

The metropolis of the future demands an efficient Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) system. Since every region has a distinct number plate format and style, an unconstrained ANPR system is still not available. There is not much work done on Pakistani number plates because of the unavailability of the data and heterogeneous plate formations. Addressing this issue, we have collected a Pakistani vehicle dataset having various plate configurations and developed a novel ANPR framework using the dataset. The proposed framework localizes the number plate region using the YOLO (You Only Look Once) object detection model, applies robust preprocessing techniques on the extracted plate region, and finally recognizes the plate label using OCR (optical character recognition) Tesseract. The obtained mAP score of the YOLOv3 is 94.3% and the YOLOv4 model is 99.5% on the 0.50 threshold, whereas the average accuracy score of our framework is found to be 73%. For comparison and validation, we implemented a LeNet Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture which uses the segmented image as an input. The comparative analysis shows that the proposed ANPR framework comprising the YOLOv4 and OCR Tesseract has good accuracy and inference time for a wide variation of illumination and style of Pakistani number plates and can be used to develop a real-time system. The proposed ANPR framework will be helpful for researchers developing ANPR for countries having similar challenging vehicle number plate formats and styles.

The Graduates Tracer Study: Bachelor of Elementary Education Program

The study assessed the impact of the Bachelor of Elementary Education program in the life of its graduates in terms of their employability and professional competencies based on the perceptions of graduates and their employers. The survey method was used in the study to determine the graduates' status and performance. There are 250 BEEd graduates involved in the study. Descriptive statistics such as frequency, percent, and arithmetic mean were utilized to determine and describe the profile of graduates and employers, the trend in the employment of graduates for the term being studied, the employers’ assessment of the graduates in terms of their knowledge and understanding of their field of specialization, qualities, general skills and specialized skills generally expected of them in order to succeed in their teaching performance, and the over-all preparation of graduates acquired from the University for the type of work they are currently engaging and other skills needed for their future demands. The data generated from the employers' assessment of the variables mentioned was further analyzed and categorized to generate interrelated thoughts/themes that will emerge from the data. The results of the study showed that graduates of the program are competent because most of the graduates are licensed professionals, employed with regular or permanent status. However, it has been found that graduates need to gain innovative skills such as, research and the use of information communication and technology. The findings can be used as the basis of the program in improving the curriculum and instruction.

Global Englishes Constructs in Language Teaching: A Review of Facebook Materials

The rising paradigm of Global Englishes (GE) was faced with native-speaker norms and the principle of diversity therein called upon global contents when there was the paucity of globally-oriented language materials and typical models hardly meet the future demands of language learners in Pakistan. At the state-level, many varities of Englishes were not on the priority list of legislation. In this scenario, this study was a systematic review of Global Englishes constructs operating in facebook materials. Twenty-five Facebook posts of different Englishes were selected opting judgmental sampling and axial coding was affixed to analyze thematic patterns in data. Findings evinced the function of GE constructs coalesced in facebook material, and this bonding directed to shape comparative cultural topics for GE instruction which was a joint venture limelighting the deep concerns of L2 speakers assailing L1 cultural, social, and economic hegemony Global Englishes-informed instruction was a useful approach to develop linguistic proficiency of students, and facebook materials were a good source to plan diverse Englishes and their constructs for prospective students in Pakistan. American English, British English, New Zealand English, Pakistani English, Thai English, and Indian English were dissected in a review of facebook materials that could be integrated with language teaching. The study was useful in developing an insight into GE constructs to be a source of cross-cultural knowledge helping to nurture multilingual speakers. The synthesis suggested an action plan for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in line with inclusivity of GE as a teaching paradigm.

Electrical Power Generation through Speed Breaker

In the present situation power becomes basic need for human life. Energy is responsible for major developments of any country’s economy. Conventional energy sources generate most of the energy of today’s world. But the population is increasing day by day and the conventional energy sources are diminishing. Moreover, these conventional energy sources are polluting and responsible for global warming. So, nonconventional sources are needed to be developed for power generation which are clean, environment friendly and sustainable. In this research we propose a renewable non-conventional energy source based on speed breaker mechanism. Our project is to enlighten the streets utilizing the jerking pressure which is wasted during the vehicles passes over speed breaker in roadside. We can tap the energy generated by moving vehicles and produce power by using the speed breaker as power generating unit. The kinetic energy of the moving vehicles can be converted into mechanical energy through rack and pinion mechanism and this mechanical energy will be converted to electrical energy using generator which will be used for lighting the street lights. Therefore, by using this mechanism we can save lot of energy which can fulfill our future demands. Keywords: kinetic energy, speed breaker, rack & pinion, generator, non-conventional energy, street light.

Physiotherapy services in patient care in Bhutan

Physiotherapy and rehabilitative services are an integral part of patient care, but in many developing countries they are not considered a priority and are either not available or not easily accessible to those who need them. Bhutan is one such country where healthcare is provided free of cost to all, but as of 2021 physiotherapy services were available only in 26 of 48 hospitals and 19 of 20 districts. The number of physiotherapy professionals per 10,000 population is 1.4 with significant rates of attrition. There is lack of awareness among patients and other health professionals about physiotherapy and rehabilitation services. The country needs to integrate physiotherapy and rehabilitation services into the overall health policy framework and develop proper planning of human resources and infrastructure to meet the current and future demands.

Geographic Distribution of Otolaryngology Advance Practice Providers and Physicians

Objectives Advanced practice providers (APPs), namely physician assistants (PAs) and nurse practitioners (NPs), play an increasing role in meeting growing demands for otolaryngologic services, particularly in rural communities. This study analyzes the geographic distribution of otolaryngology providers, which is essential to addressing future demands. Study Design Cross-sectional study. Setting Medicare Provider Utilization and Payment Data for 2017. Methods Current Procedural Terminology codes were used to identify APPs providing 10 common otolaryngologic services. Geographic distribution was evaluated by calculating densities of APPs and otolaryngologists per 100,000 persons in urban versus rural counties as defined by the National Center for Health Statistics Urban-Rural Classification Scheme. Results We identified cohorts of 8573 otolaryngologists, 1148 NPs, and 895 PAs. There were significantly higher population-controlled densities of otolaryngologists and APPs in urban counties as compared with rural counties. The majority of otolaryngologists (92.1%) and APPs (83.3%) were in urban counties. However, the proportion of APPs (16.7%) in rural counties was significantly higher than the proportion of otolaryngologists (7.9%) in rural counties ( P < .01). A significant majority of rural counties (72.2%) had zero identified providers, and a greater proportion of rural counties (5.0%) were served exclusively by APPs as compared with urban counties (3.2%). Conclusions Although otolaryngologists and APPs mostly practiced in urban counties, a relatively higher proportion of APPs practiced in rural counties when compared with otolaryngology physicians. The majority of rural counties did not have any otolaryngologic providers. Given the expected shortages of otolaryngology physicians, APPs may play a critical role in addressing these gaps in access.

Edge Caching Based on Collaborative Filtering for Heterogeneous ICN-IoT Applications

The substantial advancements offered by the edge computing has indicated serious evolutionary improvements for the internet of things (IoT) technology. The rigid design philosophy of the traditional network architecture limits its scope to meet future demands. However, information centric networking (ICN) is envisioned as a promising architecture to bridge the huge gaps and maintain IoT networks, mostly referred as ICN-IoT. The edge-enabled ICN-IoT architecture always demands efficient in-network caching techniques for supporting better user’s quality of experience (QoE). In this paper, we propose an enhanced ICN-IoT content caching strategy by enabling artificial intelligence (AI)-based collaborative filtering within the edge cloud to support heterogeneous IoT architecture. This collaborative filtering-based content caching strategy would intelligently cache content on edge nodes for traffic management at cloud databases. The evaluations has been conducted to check the performance of the proposed strategy over various benchmark strategies, such as LCE, LCD, CL4M, and ProbCache. The analytical results demonstrate the better performance of our proposed strategy with average gain of 15% for cache hit ratio, 12% reduction in content retrieval delay, and 28% reduced average hop count in comparison to best considered LCD. We believe that the proposed strategy will contribute an effective solution to the related studies in this domain.

Smart Factory Web—A Blueprint Architecture for Open Marketplaces for Industrial Production

The paper describes a reference architecture for open marketplaces to be used for networked stakeholders in industrial production ecosystems. The motivation for such an endeavor comes from the idea to apply the basic principle of the platform economy to offer functions of an asset “as a service” to industrial production, including the associated supply chain networks. Currently, commercial offers of “production as a service” usually lead to proprietary systems with the risk of platform vendor lock-ins. Hence, there is a need for an open approach that relies upon international (emerging) standards, especially those from IETF, IEC, the Plattform Industrie 4.0 and the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA). The presented approach enables federation of marketplaces according to well-defined interfaces. This article proposes a technology-independent open architecture derived from functional and non-functional system requirements and driven by the idea of the Smart Factory Web, a testbed of the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC). Furthermore, the architecture of the Smart Factory Web (SFW) platform is presented and assessed against the current and future demands of open federated marketplaces for industrial production ecosystems.

Survey of Millimeter-Wave Propagation Measurements and Models in Indoor Environments

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) is expected to deliver a huge bandwidth to address the future demands for higher data rate transmissions. However, one of the major challenges in the mmWave band is the increase in signal loss as the operating frequency increases. This has attracted several research interests both from academia and the industry for indoor and outdoor mmWave operations. This paper focuses on the works that have been carried out in the study of the mmWave channel measurement in indoor environments. A survey of the measurement techniques, prominent path loss models, analysis of path loss and delay spread for mmWave in different indoor environments is presented. This covers the mmWave frequencies from 28 GHz to 100 GHz that have been considered in the last two decades. In addition, the possible future trends for the mmWave indoor propagation studies and measurements have been discussed. These include the critical indoor environment, the roles of artificial intelligence, channel characterization for indoor devices, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, and mmWave for 6G systems. This survey can help engineers and researchers to plan, design, and optimize reliable 5G wireless indoor networks. It will also motivate the researchers and engineering communities towards finding a better outcome in the future trends of the mmWave indoor wireless network for 6G systems and beyond.