Search Results (1,919)

The systems of poloidal field coils in D-shaped Tokamaks such as ITER, EAST, JET, ASDEX Upgrade, TCV, GLOBUS-M2, DIII-D, SPARC, IGNITOR, JT-60SA, DEMO-9.1, DEMO-1.6, T-15MD, and TRT are analyzed for their efficiency in the application of plasma position, current, and shape control systems in these Tokamaks. The problem of magnetic plasma control in Tokamaks is presented. A methodology for designing hierarchical cascade systems of magnetic plasma control in D-shaped Tokamaks has been developed on the basis of generalizations of existing plasma magnetic control systems. The hierarchical levels are as follows: multivariable robust cascade control level, adaptation level, artificial intelligence level, and decision-making level. To implement these systems in the practice of physical experimentation, it is proposed to use digital twins, the basis of which is a real-time digital testbed created by Lomonosov Moscow State University and the Trapeznikov Institute of Control Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Full article

In pavement management, it is essential to have a good database with information on the condition of the roads that compose the corresponding network. In Chile, such a database does not currently exist, and there is no technology that can evaluate urban pavement condition in an efficient way. On this research, more than 50,000 images of 13.2 × 2.6 m of asphalt pavement from different zones of Santiago, Chile, were obtained. These images were processed, and the following distresses were labeled with two different levels of severities: patches; potholes; and transversal, longitudinal, and fatigue cracking. These data were used to train and evaluate the following object detection convolutional neural network models: YOLOv5 and YOLOv7. Full article

Nowadays, the agri-food sector is facing fundamental challenges. According to the FAO study, the amount of arable land per capita in the world will decrease from 0.6 hectares per person in 2000 to 0.2 hectares by 2050, while the demand for food will increase by 70%. With today’s yield growth of 1.5% per year, such changes could result in global food shortages. Therefore, the governments of developed and developing countries should support initiatives for the digitization of agri-food businesses and the introduction of new technologies to increase the volume of food production. Russia’s war against Ukraine is the main cause of the global food crisis, which could bring serious political and economic consequences. The agricultural and food sector of Ukraine is about 10% of GDP. For many years, the Ukrainian agro-industrial complex, before the full-scale invasion of Russia, occupied a leading position among the global exporters. Ukraine supplied 10% of world wheat exports, more than 14% of corn and more than 47% of sunflower oil. A full-scale war has become a real test for the Ukrainian agri-food industry. The invasion entailed the destruction of food production processes and logistics chains. Many sowing areas were mined, equipment and warehouses were destroyed. At the end of 2022, Ukraine exported agricultural products worth USD 23.6 billion. Although the figure for 2022 is 15% less than the record of 2021 (USD 27.9 billion), last year’s value of exports became the second since the independence of Ukraine. Disruptions to Ukrainian exports exacerbated the rise in food prices, which, according to the FAO index, increased by 54% in February 2022. In March 2023, prices fell, but they were still 6.4% higher than in 2022. The purpose of the study is to assess the level of digital transformation of the Ukrainian agri-food industry in order to ensure food security at the national and international levels. Digitalization of the agri-food industry in Ukraine should be considered a source of deep systemic transformations, which involves the use of digital technologies at the business level to optimize business operations, increase company productivity, and improve interaction with suppliers and customers. For agri-food companies, the issue of digitalization concerns not only technological modernization, but also a complete change of business processes: farm management systems, data processing and harvest forecasting, agricultural processing, food quality management, systems for creating added value for products, warehouse management systems, and human resources management. Nowadays, digitalization can accelerate the transformation of the agri-food industry across the entire supply chain, from manufacturing and purchasing processes to distribution, logistics and finance. Innovative technologies that can become breakthrough in the agri-food industry are as follows: bioinformatics; synthetic biology; food design; smart farming; vertical farms; aquaculture; bioinformatics; genetics; alternative sources of protein; technology of conservation and extension of the shelf life of food products. In Ukraine, a number of agri-food enterprises are moving to Industry 4.0. The most innovative companies in Ukraine are the largest exporters “Kernel”, “MHP”, “ASTARTA-KYIV”. “Kernel”, a large producer and exporter of sunflower oil, has been successfully implementing innovations for the agro-industrial complex of Ukraine for many years. The company uses digital technologies at all stages—from growing products to sales. The company’s IT team digitized logistics, trading, and document management. All information about the processes taking place in agri-food production is collected in the “Kernel DigitalAgriBusiness” innovative ecosystem. “MHP”, the largest producer and exporter of chicken in Ukraine, continues to use biogas to produce electricity, industrial steam, and heating. “MHP” biogas projects are a significant contribution to the company’s energy independence and environmental responsibility. “ASTARTA-KYIV”, a vertically integrated agricultural holding, developed a complex system of IT solutions for agribusiness management “AgriChain”, which includes management of the land bank of the agricultural company (AgriChain Land), agricultural production (AgriChain Farm), monitoring of crops (AgriChain Scout), logistics of goods (AgriChain Logistics), warehouse management (AgriChain Barn), business processes (AgriChain Kit). Digital transformations are also being followed in the dairy industry. “Bel Shostka Ukraine” company is engaged in the digital transformation of the milk harvesting process. According to our research, breakthrough innovations are predominantly implemented by large Ukrainian agri-food companies, since they have significant financial resources for R&D, while SMEs are concentrating their efforts on the digitalization of business operations and implementation of energy efficient technologies. Full article

Blockchain has become an important alternative in plenty of industries due to its features such as traceability, transparency and data integrity. Blockchain is not only present in the management of structured data-like names, timestamps, addresses and so on, but also in the management of unstructured data such as videos or images. In the present work, we focus on videos because nowadays, they are potentially exposed to be modified or altered from plenty of sources and platforms. However, we found that there are hardly any surveys or systematic literature reviews containing applications of both blockchain and integrity of videos. Thus, in this survey, we state a literature review for primary articles about the use of blockchain for video integrity to update and provide a better comprehension about this topic. As results, we encountered Ethereum and internet of vehicles as the largest underlying blockchain and field of application, respectively. At the end, we explain our findings about blockchains for video integrity and why it is an emerging topic. Full article

Currently, many swimming goggle lenses use optical plates to maintain zero refractive power in air and water. However, people’s widespread use of 3C products has increased myopia significantly, so lenses have a demand for refractive power. Lenses will have different refractive power problems in water and air media. Therefore, we solved the refractive power change in air and water by using a plane Fresnel lens with a diopter to replace plano-concave lenses. In this study, a first-order design was created and then the microstructure of the Fresnel lens was optimized using optical software. The Fresnel lens simulation results showed that the error was within 5%, which was compared with the data using the lensmaker’s equation calculation. For swimming goggles, this error value is tolerable for human vision. Full article

Verbal language has become the main way to communicate our ideas since the already established linguistic signs allow understanding between people. However, this is not the only way we have to communicate, since nonverbal language, especially facial expressions, usually convey a lot of information. Currently, the use of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) has allowed us to identify these emotions more easily through facial expression recognition (FER), which has attracted much attention from various fields of research. In this work, we will provide detailed information about the currently most used dataset and methods for identifying emotions using facial expressions, such as VGG16, ResNet50 and Inception-V3, obtaining a better performance in ResNet-50. This survey shows that the main differences in precision in each architecture are due to the number of images in the datasets used for training and testing. Full article

This paper presents findings of testing performed to date from three field asphalt concrete mixes obtained from paving performed in November 2022 for a pilot project in Hawaii. The control mix meets Hawaii State IV mix requirements, with 20% reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP) and polymer modified asphalt (PMA) binder PG64E-22. The other two mixes, which have the same gradation and RAP content, were prepared with 2 lb. per ton of NewRoad pellets consisting mostly of post-industrial high-density polyethylene (HDPE). One of these was prepared with PMA PG64E-22 and the other with neat binder, PG64-16. Testing results to date show benefits in rutting and expected results in dynamic modulus. They are inconclusive with regard to cracking because of high variability and inconsistencies in IDEAL-CT results without and with moisture sensitivity conditioning. Full article

This keynote and future paper summarises the methods that are being utilised to define the requirements of national populations’ natural resource demands for the consumption of food and beverage products so that strategies may be more effectively developed to deal with crises. The methods are presented as part of a material analysis of the UK food supply system, and they are used to demonstrate sustainable practices in food manufacturing. Our current conclusions show that the limiting factors in the food system must be focussed on human-centred activities that interact with material flows, which are often overlooked in sustainability assessments. This is critical if we intend to tackle issues of security, resilience, and sustainability incisively. Full article

In the past decade, the visualization and transformation of data and information have attracted lots of research interest, while visualization has gradually extended to all industries. Based on the retrieval of core literature in a Web of Science search from 2012 to 2022, this study finds that these developments mainly discussed the change of visualization and its related concepts, current research hotspots, and influential journal papers. Consequently, it aims to explore research gaps and provide directional guidance for future research. Full article

As a small and open economy, Uruguay is highly exposed to international and regional shocks that affect domestic uncertainty. To account for this uncertainty, we construct two geometric uncertainty indices (based on the survey of industrial expectations about the economy and the export market) and explore their association with the Uruguayan GDP cycle between 1998 and 2022. Based on the estimated linear ARDL models that showed negative but weak relationships between the uncertainty indices and the GDP cycle, we test for the existence of structural breaks in these relationships. Although we find a significant break in 2003 for both indices and another in 2019 for one of them, Wald tests performed on the non-linear models only confirm the structural break in the early 2000s in the model with the index based on export market expectations. In this non-linear model, we find that the negative influence of uncertainty fades after 2003. The evidence of a differential influence before and after this date remains, even when controlling for the variability in non-tradable domestic prices. Two implications arise from these results. First, the evidence of relevant changes that made the Uruguayan economy less vulnerable from 2003 onward. Second, the importance of the expectation about the future of the export market in the macroeconomic cycle of a small and open economy like Uruguay. Full article