Energy and Environmental Benefit of Solar Charging System for Charging Auto-Rickshaw in Developing Countries

The energy crisis and environmental impact are the major concern mf the present world. Three-wheeler auto-rickshaw becoming an important passenger transport vehicle in a developing country which are indirectly powered by the grid electricity through the batteries. Such vehicle consumes significant grid energy during charging which increases the load in the national grid and put extra stress on the electrification in line with the environmental impact. This paper investigated the existing facilities for charging auto-rickshaw in Bangladesh and designed a proposed solar charging model as a replacement based on the existing model. Then the energy and environmental benefit were estimated to reflect the significance of the proposed model and contribution in the context of the global energy crisis and environmental impact. The investigation found that the daily energy consumption is 290 kWh for a charging station capacity of 30 auto-rickshaws which is significant. The proposed solar model is designed to meet this demand offset. The environmental analysis showed that the proposed model can offset CO2, CH4, and NOx emissions by 54 tCO2eq, 40 kgCO2eq, and 60 kgCO2eq per year respectively of which the contribution of CO2­ is significant. Further research could be focused on the economic and financial analysis in-depth to promote the proposed model.

Mobility, well-being, and community participation among people with depression: an observation study using geographically-explicit ecological momentary assessment (GEMA) (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Globally, more than 300 million people suffer from depressive disorders. Despite a wide range of conducted research, information on the mobility and daily routines of persons with depression remains lacking. OBJECTIVE To describe a preliminary explication of the association between mobility, well-being, and community participation of people with depression as they occur in real-time settings. METHODS We used a multivariate, time-series, single-subject, repeated measures (MRSRM) design. People with depression (N=33) were invited to use a GPS device for over two weeks for continuous mobility tracking, while information on their well-being was collected with paper surveys before and after two-weeks periods. The tracking records from 32 participants were imported into Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to extract the specific mobility information. Socio-demographic and environmental information (building density, greenness index and PM2.5) was derived for statistical analysis to explore the relationship between mobility, community participation and mental health using correlation coefficients and logistic regression analysis. RESULTS The more hours participants stayed at home, the more often they had depressive symptoms (r=0.47, P<.01) but their satisfaction with life was higher (r=0.38, P<.05). On the contrary, participants with longer total distance reported more stress (r=0.47, P<.01) and the more destinations participants travelled to, the more depressive symptoms they had (r=-0.36, P<.05). Wide travelling area was positively associated with stress and negatively associated with satisfaction with life, while more time spent at home was positively associated with depressive symptoms and low self-esteem. Time spent outside the home was also negatively associated with satisfaction with life and self-esteem. The great majority (91%) perceived the tracking device as comfortable and convenient and 31% had positive feelings about mobility tracking. Still, three participants (9%) expressed that the device caused inconvenience, stress or fair as the battery needed to be charged frequently. CONCLUSIONS Our study showed that having signs of depression is associated with mobility area and time spent at home among persons with depression, which may mean that their activity level in society is limited. Staying home may be a solution for avoiding extra stress, problems with self-esteem and maintaining satisfaction with life. Low-threshold access to health services should be tailored for each person based on their needs. More information based on studies using robust design, bigger sample size, and more accurate measurement methods, however, is required before individualized services can be fully achieved. Although using GPS may be a feasible data collection method, more effort should be put into collecting the data with easy-to-use technology to avoid extra stress in the participants.

Effect of Surface and Interfacial Tension on the Resonance Frequency of Microfluidic Channel Cantilever

The bending resonance of micro-sized resonators has been utilized to study adsorption of analyte molecules in complex fluids of picogram quantity. Traditionally, the analysis to characterize the resonance frequency has focused solely on the mass change, whereas the effect of interfacial tension of the fluid has been largely neglected. By observing forced vibrations of a microfluidic cantilever filled with a series of alkanes using a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV), we studied the effect of surface and interfacial tension on the resonance frequency. Here, we incorporated the Young–Laplace equation into the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory to consider extra stress that surface and interface tension exerts on the vibration of the cantilever. Based on the hypothesis that the near-surface region of a continuum is subject to the extra stress, thin surface and interface layers are introduced to our model. The thin layer is subject to an axial force exerted by the extra stress, which in turn affects the transverse vibration of the cantilever. We tested the analytical model by varying the interfacial tension between the silicon nitride microchannel cantilever and the filled alkanes, whose interfacial tension varies with chain length. Compared with the conventional Euler–Bernoulli model, our enhanced model provides a better agreement to the experimental results, shedding light on precision measurements using micro-sized cantilever resonators.

Sociocultural Factors That Impact the Health Status, Quality of Life, and Academic Achievement of International Graduate Students

This literature review explores the sociocultural experiences of international graduate students in universities in the United States. In addition to the typical challenges faced by students going to universities in America, international graduate students undergo extra stress. Research has shown that students face issues such as negotiating the U.S. health care system, the pressures of competency in American English, balancing financial concerns, social connectivity, and anxiety due to isolation from family and friends. These factors place students at risk for developing health problems. Significant findings have indicated that institutions and students’ age play important roles in impacting students’ successful adjusting experiences even though the struggle for acculturation is a personal task. We organized our analysis and discussion around how to help graduate students to obtain sociocultural support and concluded with some suggestions on ways to address inadequacies within the institutional systems to make the schools welcoming for international students.

Dispersal and migration have contrasting effects on butterfly flight morphology and reproduction

Movement may fundamentally alter morphology and reproductive states in insects. In long-distance migrants, reproductive diapause is associated with trade-offs between diverse life-history traits such as flight morphology and lifespan. However, many non-diapausing insects engage in shorter resource-driven dispersals. How diapause and other reproductive states alter flight morphology in migrating versus dispersing insects is poorly understood. To find out, we compared flight morphology in different reproductive states of multiple butterfly species. We found that dispersers consisted of ovulating females with higher egg loads compared with non-dispersing females. This trend was in stark contrast with that of migrating female butterflies in reproductive diapause, which made substantially higher investment in flight tissue compared with reproductively active, non-migrating females. Thus, long-distance migration and shorter resource-driven dispersals had contrasting effects on flight morphology and egg loads. By contrast, male flight morphology was not affected by dispersal, migration or associated reproductive states. Thus, dispersal and migration affected resource allocation in flight and reproductive tissue in a sex-specific manner across relatively mobile versus non-dispersing individuals of different species. These findings suggest that dispersals between fragmented habitats may put extra stress on egg-carrying females by increasing their flight burdens.

National Culture Influence on Organisational Trauma

Increasing human interaction creates extra stress on individuals and organisations as well. The nature of such stress results in economic shocks and large societal and organisational traumas. Although recent social science is capable of addressing the complexity of international interplay such as culture, acts of multinational corporations or cross-cultural team management, little attention was paid on the cultural aspects of removing organisational trauma. Since the 1980s, social science has experienced lively development in cross-cultural studies via the work of Hofstede, the Globe Group, the World Value Survey initiative, Trompenaars, Schwartz and others. Although major models are sufficient for defining national culture, there is lack of work explaining the managerial implications for crisis management or mitigating trauma in organisations.The authors of this chapter intend to critically review the latest literature on national culture, while discussing the relevant models and introducing the theoretic framework applicable for crisis/ trauma management.

Exact regularised point particle (ERPP) method for particle-laden wall-bounded flows in the two-way coupling regime

The exact regularised point particle (ERPP) method is extended to treat the inter-phase momentum coupling between particles and fluid in the presence of walls by accounting for vorticity generation due to particles close to solid boundaries. The ERPP method overcomes the limitations of other methods by allowing the simulation of an extensive parameter space (Stokes number, mass loading, particle-to-fluid density ratio and Reynolds number) and of particle spatial distributions that are uneven (few particles per computational cell). The enhanced ERPP method is explained in detail and validated by considering the global impulse balance. In conditions when particles are located close to the wall, a common scenario in wall-bounded turbulent flows, the main contribution to the total impulse arises from the particle-induced vorticity at the solid boundary. The method is applied to direct numerical simulations of particle-laden turbulent pipe flow in the two-way coupling regime to address turbulence modulation. The effects of the mass loading, the Stokes number and the particle-to-fluid density ratio are investigated. The drag is either unaltered or increased by the particles with respect to the uncoupled case. No drag reduction is found in the parameter space considered. The momentum stress budget, which includes an extra stress contribution by the particles, provides the rationale behind the drag behaviour. The extra stress produces a momentum flux towards the wall that strongly modifies the viscous stress, the culprit of drag at solid boundaries.

SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS ATTITUDE TOWARDS JUNIOR SCHOOL CERTIFICATE (JSC) EXAMINATION IN BANGLADESH

The study investigates secondary students’ attitude towards junior school certificate (JSC) examination in Bangladesh. The study is mainly quantitative and data was collected in a computable manner through questionnaires. Secondary students who would take the JSC examination were the main data source of the study. Two hundred fifty students (120 male and 130 female) were chosen randomly from ten secondary schools (five private and five government) in Dhaka. The study revealed that secondary students’ have a positive attitude towards JSC examination. There was no significant difference between male and female students attitude towards JSC examination. JSC exam had increased students both quality of study and study time, enhanced students’ creativity and reduced the fear of examination. On the contrary, JSC examination had hampered students’ normal life by extra stress, reduced their playtime and made them dependent on guidebooks for better grades. Therefore, the study suggests changing current JSC examination systems by creating test items focused on creativity and problem-solving tasks to ensure the quality of education in Bangladesh. These findings can inform the government as well as o relevant stakeholders in making necessary changes in the JSC examination in Bangladesh.

Shape and rheology of droplets with viscous surface moduli

We develop perturbation theories to describe the flow dynamics of a droplet with a thin layer of insoluble surfactant whose mechanics are described by interfacial viscosity, i.e. a Boussinesq–Scriven constitutive law. The theories quantify droplet deformation in the limit of small capillary number, large viscosity ratio, or large shear Boussinesq number, to a sufficient level of approximation where one can extract information about nonlinear rheology and droplet breakup. In the first part of this manuscript, we quantify the Taylor deformation parameter and inclination angle in shear and extensional flows, developing expressions that resolve discrepancies between current analytical theories and boundary element simulations. Interestingly, the theories we develop appear to accurately describe the inclination angle of a clean droplet over a wider range of viscosity ratios and capillary numbers than previous works. In the second part of the manuscript, we calculate how interfacial viscosity alters the extra stress of a dilute suspension of droplets, in particular the shear stress, normal stress differences, shear thinning and extensional thickening. The normal stresses are intimately related to the lateral migration of droplets in wall-bound shear flow, and we explore the influence of interfacial viscosity on this phenomenon. We conclude by discussing how one can use these theories to describe droplet breakup, and how one can incorporate additional effects into the perturbation theories such as viscoelastic membranes and/or Marangoni flows.

Human Emotion Surveillance Using Computer Vision

India, a land of marvels, is outstanding in many aspects, its culture, ecosystem, etc. Sadly, it also ranks among the top countries in the world to have an annual suicide rate. This project aims at the foundation of human emotion surveillance. This system assists in the facial recognition, feature extraction and the threshold detection of stress for emotions expressed through face using the viola-jones algorithms and weak classifiers. This focuses basically on segregation of positive and negative emotions, detecting stress based on a usual threshold value and possibly providing an alternate means to let loose the extra stress built up if possible.