Citywide Inclusive Sanitation Guidance Note: What Is Citywide Inclusive Sanitation and Why Is It Needed?

This guidance note explains how the concept of citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) for developing more comprehensive, effective, and sustainable sanitation services in urban areas. CWIS focuses on providing urban areas with access to and benefits from adequate and sustainable sanitation services, including the safe, effective, and sustainable management of all human waste along the whole sanitation service chain. This guidance note is part of a series that aims to share essential knowledge to embed CWIS principles in planning and delivering sanitation services to ADB developing member countries. These learning materials were prepared by ADB’s Water Sector Group and structured along the ADB project processing cycle.

Citywide Inclusive Sanitation Guidance Note: Inclusive Financial Mechanisms: Improving Access to Sanitation Services for Poor Households

This guidance note outlines key considerations and practical steps to take in designing citywide inclusive sanitation (CWIS) projects on affordable and sustainable sanitation services for the urban poor. Funding for sanitation must be utilized effectively to reach those most in need of support. This guidance note explains how different financing mechanisms can be applied to provide affordable sanitation services to poor households. It is part of a series that aims to share essential knowledge to embed CWIS principles in planning and delivering sanitation services to ADB developing member countries. These learning materials were prepared by ADB’s Water Sector Group and structured along the ADB project processing cycle.

Processing Cycle Efficiency to Monitor the Performance of an Intelligent Tube Preparation System for Phlebotomy Services

Background: The waiting time (WT) for a phlebotomy is directly related to patient satisfaction with a health service. However, the processing time varies widely depending on the type of patients. Monitoring of the WT alone may not enable an effective evaluation of the lean performance of the medical staff for patients with different characteristics. The objective of this study was to use process cycle efficiency (PCE) to assess the performance of an intelligent tube preparation system (ITPS) which automatically labeled test tubes and conducted patient rerouting for phlebotomy services, and to interpret the WT during peak hours. Methods: Three time periods were used. The baseline period was from 1 July to 31 July 2014. Phase 1 was after the establishment of the ITPS, with patients ≥80 years old being rerouted. In phase 2, patients ≥78 years old were rerouted. Those data were recorded with a calling system and ITPS, respectively. Results: PCE was significantly improved from 12.9% at baseline to 51.1% (p < 0.001) in phase 1 and 53.0% (p < 0.001) in phase 2. The WT of 16.9 min at baseline was reduced to 3.8 min in phase 1 (p < 0.001), and 3.6 min in phase 2 (p < 0.001). Moreover, the results showed that a WT < 10 min was consistent with a PCE ≥ 25%. Conclusions: Establishing an ITPS for phlebotomy can significantly increase PCE and shorten the WT. Furthermore, the PCE ≥ 25% could be a good assessment reference for the management of appropriate human resources for phlebotomy services, although it is a complex parameter.

Corn plants as temporary acoustic barrier to limit the effects of noise pollution

Corn is a cereal imported into Europe from the Americas and is used for human and animal feed, but there are also industrial uses such as the production of ethanol, as a fuel for heating homes or to produce starch. Corn grows in the summer in areas where there is water. Corn is grown in many regions of the world and its production exceeds that of any other cereal in quantity. The corn plant can reach up to three meters in height, with a stem diameter of a few centimeters and with dense leaves longer than 30 cm and 10 cm wide. There are noisy activities where it is necessary to attenuate the noise produced to limit the effects of noise pollution. Some activities use temporary barriers depending on the processing cycle adopted. If noisy work is carried out during the summer season, corn rows of adequate width can be used as an acoustic barrier. In this paper, the possibility of using corn plants as an acoustic barrier is investigated. The acoustic measurements of the noise attenuation of corn rows of adequate width are described. Using a semi-spherical source placed on the ground, the acoustic attenuation due to the corn plants arranged in several rows for different distances from the sound source to the receiver was measured.

Creation of AlSi12 Alloy Coating by Centrifugal Induction Surfacing with the Addition of Low-Melting Metals

This paper investigates the structure and mechanical characteristics of a coating based on an AlSi12 alloy, obtained by centrifugal induction surfacing as an alternative to a bronze sliding bearing. To provide for the adhesion of an aluminum layer to the inner surface of a steel bearing housing, a sublayer of low-melting metals was formed, while the formation of the main layer and the sublayer was done in a single processing cycle. The low-melting metals had higher density, which ensured that the sublayer was created at the interface with the steel bearing housing under the action of centrifugal forces. It is shown that the low-melting sublayer forms a strong bond both with the aluminum alloy and with the steel base. Lead and tin are used as low-melting additives. It has been established that lead or tin used in a sublayer are indirectly involved in the structural formation of boundary layers of steel and aluminum claddings, acting as a medium for diffuse mass transfer. Thus, lead is not included in the composition of the main coating and does not change the chemical composition of the aluminum layer. After the addition of tin, the aluminum develops a dendritic structure, with tin captured in the interdendritic space. In this case, the deposited layer is saturated with iron with the formation of intermetallic (Fe, Al, Si) compounds, both at the interface and in the coating volume. This paper offers an explanation of the mechanism through which Pb and Sn act on the structure formation of the coating, and on the boundary layer of the steel bearing housing. Tribological tests have shown that the resulting materials are a promising option for plain bearings and highly competitive with the CuSn10P bronze.

Study of the influence of treatment on the strength of undoped indium antimonide single-crystal plates

The method of plane-transverse bending was used to measure the strength of thin single-crystal plates of undoped InSb with a crystallographic orientation of (100). It was found that the strength of the plates (thickness ≤ 800 μm) depends on their processing. Using a full processing cycle (grinding and chemical polishing) allows to increase the strength of InSb plates by 2 times (from 3.0 to 6.4 kg/mm2). It is shown that the dependence of strength on processing for wafers with (100) orientation is similar to this dependence for wafers (111), while the strength of wafers (111) is 2 times higher. The contact profilometry method was used to measure the roughness of thin plates, which also passed successive processing steps. It was found that during a full cycle of processing, the roughness of InSb plates decreases (Ra from 0.6 to 0.04 μm), leading to a general smoothing of the surface roughness. The strength and roughness of the (100) InSb and GaAs wafers are compared. It was found that the strength of GaAs cut wafers is 2 times higher than the strength of InSb cut wafers and slightly increases after a full cycle of their processing. It was shown that the roughness of GaAs and InSb plates after a full cycle of surface treatment is significantly reduced: 10 times for InSb due to overall surface leveling and 3 times for GaAs (Rz from 2.4 to 0.8 μm) due to a decrease in the peak component. Conducting a full cycle of processing InSb plates can increase their strength by removing broken layers by sequential operations and reducing the risk of mechanical damage.

Synthesis of AA7075 Based 10 wt.% Graphite Reinforced Composites for High Damping Capacity

The damping capacity improvement in under seawater for torpedo cone is the main of the research work. In the proposed work, an induction furnace was used to fabricate aluminum alloy AA7075 by melting individual elements such as pure Al, Zn, Mg, and Cu, followed by 10 wt.% graphite with varying sizes of reinforcement C1 (3 to 10μm), C2 (53 to 66μm), and C3 (106 to 150μm). Ingot casting was made in steel mold of 45 45 120mm3 and then hot forged at 490ᵒC, followed by solutionizing and artificial aging. Composites characterized for optical, SEM, hardness, and DMA analysis for loss factor. The improved performance in damping capacity by 50% observed for the threshold modulus of particulate (volume to the surface) for C2 composite. The processing cycle of fabrication of composites has been established.

Calculating the Strength of Rhetorical Arguments in Persuasive Negotiation Dialogues

Rhetorical arguments are used in negotiation dialogues when a proponent agent tries to persuade his opponent to accept a proposal more readily. When more than one argument is generated, the proponent must compare them in order to select the most adequate for his interests. A way of comparing them is by means of their strength values. Related work propose a calculation based only on the components of the rhetorical arguments, i.e., the importance of the opponent's goal and the certainty level of the beliefs that make up the argument. This work aims to propose a model for the calculation of the strength of rhetorical arguments, which is inspired on the pre-conditions of credibility and preferability stated by Guerini and Castelfranchi. Thus, we suggest the use of two new criteria to the strength calculation: the credibility of the proponent and the status of the opponent's goal in the goal processing cycle. The model is empirically evaluated and the results demonstrate that the proposed model is more efficient than previous works in terms of number of exchanged arguments and number of reached agreements.