Assessment of the possibility of human rescuing during fire in residential building

Рассмотрены общие методологические положения, позволяющие оценить возможность спасения людей при пожаре в жилом здании. Они базируются на расчетах временных интервалов развития опасных факторов пожара и перемещения пожарных подразделений, а также учитывают фактор потери огнестойкости строительных конструкций здания. Для дальнейшего интегрирования этих методологических положений в «Методику определения расчетных величин пожарного риска в зданиях, сооружениях и пожарных отсеках различных классов функциональной пожарной опасности» использованы положения этой Методики в части прогноза распространения пожара между помещениями и предельно допустимых значений опасных факторов пожара для спасаемых людей. Приведен пример расчета на конкретном объекте. The provisions of 80 Clause of the Federal Law No 123-FZ dated July 22, 2008 «Technical Regulations on Fire Safety Requirements» provide that structural, space-planning and engineering solutions of buildings and structures should ensure not only the possibility of people escape to a safe zone before harm to their life and health due to exposure to hazardous fire factors, but also the possibility of rescuing people. The process of forced movement of people outward when exposed to dangerous fire factors or when there is an immediate threat of this impact is understood as the rescue of people according to modern regulatory documents. This implies that rescue is carried out independently, with the help of fire departments or specially trained personnel, including the use of rescue equipment, through evacuation and emergency exits. Self-rescue of people presupposes their independent movement through emergency exits. The rescue of people by the personnel of the facility and/or by fire departments in case of fire in practice is due to the following main circumstances: - the absence of alarm and warning systems in buildings or failures of these systems, as a result of which some people do not receive information about the fire in a timely manner, and if they receive information about the fire late, they cannot use the escape routes due to their blocking by fire; - the presence of nonmobile groups of people in buildings; - the impossibility to ensure the fire safety of children on the basis of their independent evacuation in maternity hospitals, nursery groups of preschool educational institutions, in kindergartens of a compensating type (specialized), etc.; - the arrangement of fire-safe zones in buildings, from which the rescue of people should carried out by the forces of fire departments. The effectiveness of fire protection systems in terms of ensuring the safe escape of people is currently being assessed on the basis of fire risk calculations performed according to approved methods. It is currently difficult to conduct a comprehensive and substantiated assessment of the effectiveness of fire protection systems in terms of ensuring the possibility of rescuing people in case of fire due to the lack of unambiguous quantitative criteria and methodological provisions that would allow such assessment. The purpose of this study is to develop general methodological provisions that make it possible to assess the possibility of saving people in case of a fire in a residential building, based on the calculations of time intervals for the development of hazardous factors of fire and the movement of fire departments.

A Local TR-MUSIC Algorithm for Damage Imaging of Aircraft Structures

Lamb wave-based damage imaging is a promising technique for aircraft structural health monitoring, as enhancing the resolution of damage detection is a persistent challenge. In this paper, a damage imaging technique based on the Time Reversal-MUltiple SIgnal Classification (TR-MUSIC) algorithm is developed to detect damage in plate-type structures. In the TR-MUSIC algorithm, a transfer matrix is first established by exciting and sensing signals. A TR operator is constructed for eigenvalue decomposition to divide the data space into signal and noise subspaces. The structural space spectrum of the algorithm is calculated based on the orthogonality of the two subspaces. A local TR-MUSIC algorithm is proposed to enhance the image quality of multiple damages by using a moving time window to establish the local space spectrum at different times or different distances. The multidamage detection capability of the proposed enhanced TR-MUSIC algorithm is verified by simulations and experiments. The results reveal that the local TR-MUSIC algorithm can not only effectively detect multiple damages in plate-type structures with good image quality but also has a superresolution ability for detecting damage with distances smaller than half the wavelength.

Analyzing Kinase Similarity in Small Molecule and Protein Structural Space to Explore the Limits of Multi-Target Screening

While selective inhibition is one of the key assets for a small molecule drug, many diseases can only be tackled by simultaneous inhibition of several proteins. An example where achieving selectivity is especially challenging are ligands targeting human kinases. This difficulty arises from the high structural conservation of the kinase ATP binding sites, the area targeted by most inhibitors. We investigated the possibility to identify novel small molecule ligands with pre-defined binding profiles for a series of kinase targets and anti-targets by in silico docking. The candidate ligands originating from these calculations were assayed to determine their experimental binding profiles. Compared to previous studies, the acquired hit rates were low in this specific setup, which aimed at not only selecting multi-target kinase ligands, but also designing out binding to anti-targets. Specifically, only a single profiled substance could be verified as a sub-micromolar, dual-specific EGFR/ErbB2 ligand that indeed avoided its selected anti-target BRAF. We subsequently re-analyzed our target choice and in silico strategy based on these findings, with a particular emphasis on the hit rates that can be expected from a given target combination. To that end, we supplemented the structure-based docking calculations with bioinformatic considerations of binding pocket sequence and structure similarity as well as ligand-centric comparisons of kinases. Taken together, our results provide a multi-faceted picture of how pocket space can determine the success of docking in multi-target drug discovery efforts.

Future Opportunities for Using Gamification in Management Education

Gamification as a potent pedagogic tool existed even in the ancient periods and in different geographical regions. It was observed that using gamification to teach the learners was more powerful and useful so much so that it helped the optimum utilization of resources. However, with the advent of virtual reality and augmented reality making inroads into education in general and management education in particular, it is now feasible to use gamification for management education. It is often found that the management learners are comparatively brainier and selected after strict competitive examinations. They get easily blasé of the traditional methods of pedagogy. They have always demanded challenging curricula, deep contents, and exciting pedagogy to learn. It is in this context that the gamification of learning has been introduced to motivate and challenge the learners by using video game design and game elements in learning environments. These games are meant to maximise enjoyment and engagement through influencing the interests of learners and inspiring them to continue with their learning process. Gamification in its practical use in the management educational spaces and corporate training spaces made a substantial impact all across the globe. The future opportunities for gamification both in content space and structural space are going to be far more than can be imagined with the explosion taking place in technology.

Self-Supervised Representation Learning of Protein Tertiary Structures (PtsRep): Protein Engineering as A Case Study

In recent years, deep learning has been increasingly used to decipher the relationships among protein sequence, structure, and function. Thus far deep learning of proteins has mostly utilized protein primary sequence information, while the vast amount of protein tertiary structural information remains unused. In this study, we devised a self-supervised representation learning framework to extract the fundamental features of unlabeled protein tertiary structures (PtsRep), and the embedded representations were transferred to two commonly recognized protein engineering tasks, protein stability and GFP fluorescence prediction. On both tasks, PtsRep significantly outperformed the two benchmark methods (UniRep and TAPE-BERT), which are based on protein primary sequences. Protein clustering analyses demonstrated that PtsRep can capture the structural signals in proteins. PtsRep reveals an avenue for general protein structural representation learning, and for exploring protein structural space for protein engineering and drug design.

Dimensions of time and space in sociology

Contemporary sociology has significantly changed the concept of space and time. According to Wallerstein, time and space represent a reality that sociology has long neglected. The situation is different in historical sciences, in which, as White states, the narrative approach prevails, and in historical sociology. The authors focus on time and space as frames for the historically oriented explanation. Thus, time can be understood in different ways - as passing, duration, measure, moment appropriate for an action or change. Different forms of time represent different frames for interpreting social events. Space is often interpreted in the relational perspective - as an order of relations formed by interacting subjects. The frame, in which we place an event, determines how we see and think about space and time. Reflections on time were significantly influenced by Braudel, who distinguished three levels of historical time. Today, the issue of space and time-space is considered by social geography, which provides some insights for sociology, as Giddens shows, especially when examining modernization and globalization. The sociological concept of time-space was developed by Wallerstein, who distinguished five types of space-time: episodic-geopolitical, conjunctural-ideological, structural, eternal, and transformative. These types of space-time provide different perspectives for the analysis of specific historical events. One of the reasons why Wallerstein places such an emphasis on space-time is that he believes that we are in the transformative time-space, which marks the end of the long structural space-time of the world system. Therefore, we face opposing historical choices and have no certainty, except that every step we take will have serious consequences.