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The role of ideological attitudes in responses to COVID-19 threat and government restrictions in Australia

- Clarke, Edward, Klas, Anna, Dyos, Emily

  • Authors: Clarke, Edward , Klas, Anna , Dyos, Emily
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Personality and Individual Differences Vol. 175, no. (2021), p.
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  • Description: Many government strategies to reduce the spread of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) involved unprecedented restrictions on personal movement, disrupting social and economic norms. Although generally well-received in Australia, community frustration regarding these restrictions appeared to diverge across political lines. Therefore, we examined the unique effects of the ideological subfactors of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA; Aggression, Submission and Conventionalism) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO; Dominance and Anti-egalitarianism) in predicting perceived personal threat of COVID-19, and support for and reactance to government restrictions, in Australian residents across two separate samples (S1 N = 451, S2 N = 838). COVID-19 threat was positively predicted by Submission, and negatively by Conventionalism, and Anti-egalitarianism. Support for restrictions was also positively predicted by Submission, and negatively by Conventionalism, Dominance, and Anti-egalitarianism. Reactance to government restrictions was negatively predicted by Submission, and positively by Conventionalism, Dominance, and Anti-egalitarianism. These findings suggest that right-wing ideological subfactors contribute to the one's perception of COVID-19 threat and government restrictions differentially. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Traffic accident detection and condition analysis based on social networking data

- Ali, Farman, Ali, Amjad, Imran, Muhammad, Naqvi, Rizwan, Siddiqi, Muhammad, Kwak, Kyung-Sup

  • Authors: Ali, Farman , Ali, Amjad , Imran, Muhammad , Naqvi, Rizwan , Siddiqi, Muhammad , Kwak, Kyung-Sup
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Accident Analysis and Prevention Vol. 151, no. (2021), p.
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  • Description: Accurate detection of traffic accidents as well as condition analysis are essential to effectively restoring traffic flow and reducing serious injuries and fatalities. This goal can be obtained using an advanced data classification model with a rich source of traffic information. Several systems based on sensors and social networking platforms have been presented recently to detect traffic events and monitor traffic conditions. However, sensor-based systems provide limited information, and may fail owing to the long detection times and high false-alarm rates. In addition, social networking data are unstructured, unpredictable, and contain idioms, jargon, and dynamic topics. The machine learning algorithms utilized for traffic event detection might not extract valuable information from social networking data. In this paper, a social network–based, real-time monitoring framework is proposed for traffic accident detection and condition analysis using ontology and latent Dirichlet allocation (OLDA) and bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM). First, the query-based search engine effectively collects traffic information from social networks, and the data preprocessing module transforms it into structured form. Second, the proposed OLDA-based topic modeling method automatically labels each sentence (e.g., traffic or non-traffic) to identify the exact traffic information. In addition, the ontology-based event recognition approach detects traffic events from traffic-related data. Next, the sentiment analysis technique identifies the polarity of traffic events employing user's opinions, which helps determine accurate conditions of traffic events. Finally, the FastText model and Bi-LSTM with softmax regression are trained for traffic event detection and condition analysis. The proposed framework is evaluated using traffic-related data, comparing OLDA and Bi-LSTM with existing topic modeling methods and traditional classifiers using word embedding models, respectively. Our system outperforms state-of-the-art methods and achieves accuracy of 97 %. This finding demonstrates that the proposed system is more efficient for traffic event detection and condition analysis, in comparison to other existing systems. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Transport infrastructure and house prices in the long run

- Churchill, Sefa, Baako, Kingsley, Mintah, Kwabena, Zhang, Quanda

  • Authors: Churchill, Sefa , Baako, Kingsley , Mintah, Kwabena , Zhang, Quanda
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Transport Policy Vol. 112, no. (2021), p. 1-12
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  • Description: We examine the effects of transport infrastructure on house prices in the OECD countries over the period 1870 to 2016. We employ both parametric and non-parametric panel data techniques that account for the non-linear and time-varying relationship between transport infrastructure and house prices. Our parametric results, which are based on newly developed panel data models that incorporate interactive fixed effects, suggest that transport infrastructure is positively associated with house prices. The non-parametric estimates suggest a time-varying relationship and that the average positive effect of transport infrastructure has been the case for most of the period we study. We also examine three channels through which transport infrastructure could influence house prices – economic growth, employment, and crime – and find that economic growth is a mechanism through which transport infrastructure transmits to house prices. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Trends in, projections of, and inequalities in reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health service coverage in Vietnam 2000-2030 : a Bayesian analysis at national and sub-national levels

- Nguyen, Phuong, Rahman, Shafiur, Le, Phuong, Nguyen, Huy, Vu, Kien

  • Authors: Nguyen, Phuong , Rahman, Shafiur , Le, Phuong , Nguyen, Huy , Vu, Kien
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: The Lancet Regional Health - Western Pacific Vol. 15, no. (2021), p.
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  • Description: Background: To assess the reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) service coverage in Vietnam with trends in 2000−2014, projections and probability of achieving targets in 2030 at national and sub-national levels; and to analyze the socioeconomic, regional and urban-rural inequalities in RMNCH service indicators. Methods: We used national population-based datasets of 44,624 households in Vietnam from 2000 to 2014. We applied Bayesian regression models to estimate the trends in and projections of RMNCH indicators and the probabilities of achieving the 2030 targets. Using the relative index, slope index, and concentration index of inequality, we examined the patterns and trends in RMNCH coverage inequality. Findings: We projected that 9 out of 17 health service indicators (53%) would likely achieve the 2030 targets at the national level, including at least one and four ANC visits, BCG immunization, access to improved water and adequate sanitation, institutional delivery, skilled birth attendance, care-seeking for pneumonia, and ARI treatment. We observed very low coverages and zero chance of achieving the 2030 targets at national and sub-national levels in early initiation and exclusive breastfeeding, family planning needs satisfied, and oral rehydration therapy. The most deprived households living in rural areas and the Northwest, Northeast, North Central, Central Highlands, and Mekong River Delta regions would not reach the 80% immunization coverage of DPT3, Polio3, Measles and full immunization. We found socioeconomic, regional, and urban-rural inequalities in all RMNCH indicators in 2014 and no change in inequalities over 15 years in the lowest-coverage indicators. Interpretation: Vietnam has made substantial progress toward UHC. By improving the government's health system reform efforts, re-allocating resources focusing on people in the most impoverished rural regions, and restructuring and enhancing current health programs, Vietnam can achieve the UHC targets and other health-related SDGs. Funding: The authors did not receive any funds for conducting this study. © 2021 The Author(s)

Unidirectional ablation minimizes unwanted thermal damage and promotes better thermal ablation efficacy in time-based switching bipolar radiofrequency ablation

- Ooi, Ean H., Ooi, Ean Tat

  • Authors: Ooi, Ean H. , Ooi, Ean Tat
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Computers in Biology and Medicine Vol. 137, no. (2021), p.
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  • Description: Switching bipolar radiofrequency ablation (bRFA) is a thermal treatment modality used for liver cancer treatment that is capable of producing larger, more confluent and more regular thermal coagulation. When implemented in the no-touch mode, switching bRFA can prevent tumour track seeding; a medical phenomenon defined by the deposition of cancer cells along the insertion track. Nevertheless, the no-touch mode was found to yield significant unwanted thermal damage as a result of the electrodes’ position outside the tumour. It is postulated that the unwanted thermal damage can be minimized if ablation can be directed such that it focuses only within the tumour domain. As it turns out, this can be achieved by partially insulating the active tip of the RF electrodes such that electric current flows in and out of the tissue only through the non-insulated section of the electrode. This concept is known as unidirectional ablation and has been shown to produce the desired effect in monopolar RFA. In this paper, computational models based on a well-established mathematical framework for modelling RFA was developed to investigate if unidirectional ablation can minimize unwanted thermal damage during time-based switching bRFA. From the numerical results, unidirectional ablation was shown to produce treatment efficacy of nearly 100%, while at the same time, minimizing the amount of unwanted thermal damage. Nevertheless, this effect was observed only when the switch interval of the time-based protocol was set to 50 s. An extended switch interval negated the benefits of unidirectional ablation. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

Using long-term data to inform a decision pathway for restoration of ecosystem resilience

- Gillson, Lindsey, Dirk, Cherié, Gell, Peter

  • Authors: Gillson, Lindsey , Dirk, Cherié , Gell, Peter
  • Date: 2021
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Anthropocene Vol. 36, no. (2021), p.
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  • Description: Landscapes change over time in response to multiple interacting drivers, including climate, disturbance, and land-use, which all leave a lasting legacy on ecosystem structure and function. As the dynamic nature of ecosystems is increasingly recognised, long-term data is essential to contextualise recent changes and provide a frame of reference for planning appropriate restoration responses. Knowledge of ecological function and process can underpin management thresholds and decision pathways that consider the history and resilience of ecosystems. This paper reviews and synthesizes literature relevant to process-based approaches to restoration ecology that incorporates a long-term perspective. In doing so, we identify alternative descriptors to frame reference conditions, useful theoretical principles for restoration ecology, and a management decision-support framework based on these principles. Such tools enable exploration of possible future scenarios and adaptation pathways for social-ecological resilience in a no-analogue future. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd

When staying long enough is enough?

- Fieger, Peter, Prayag, Girish, Hall, C., Rice, John, Gössling, Stefan

A combined virtual element method and the scaled boundary finite element method for linear elastic fracture mechanics

- Adak, Dibyendu, Pramod, ALN, Ooi, Ean Tat, Natarajan, Sundararajan

  • Authors: Adak, Dibyendu , Pramod, ALN , Ooi, Ean Tat , Natarajan, Sundararajan
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Engineering Analysis with Boundary Elements Vol. 113, no. (2020), p. 9-16
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  • Description: In this paper, we propose a framework that combines the recently introduced virtual element method (VEM) and the scaled boundary finite element method (SBFEM) to evaluate the fracture parameters. The domain is discretized with arbitrary polygons and the element that contains the crack tip is treated within the framework of the SBFEM. This facilitates a semi-analytical treatment of the crack tip singularity allowing the fracture parameters are estimated directly from the definition. The VEM is employed for the rest of the domain. The salient feature of the VEM is that the terms in the stiffness matrix are computed without requiring higher order quadrature schemes. As both the methods satisfy partition of unity and the compatibility condition, the matrices are assembled as in the conventional FEM. The accuracy of the proposed formulation is demonstrated with two standard benchmark examples. The proposed VEM-SBFEM framework yields accurate results. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

A decade of head, neck and facial cricket injury hospitalisations in Victoria, Australia : from 2007/08 to 2016/17

- Kodikara, Dulan, Plumb, Mandy, Twomey, Dara

  • Authors: Kodikara, Dulan , Plumb, Mandy , Twomey, Dara
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport Vol. 23, no. 12 (2020), p. 1161-1165
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  • Description: Objectives: To present an epidemiological profile of hospital-treated head, neck and facial cricket injuries from 2007/08 to 2016/17 in Victoria, Australia. Design: Retrospective analysis of emergency department and hospital admission data. Methods: An analysis of Victorian hospital-treated head, neck and facial cricket injuries of all cricket participants over 5 years old between July 2007 and June 2017. Results: Over the decade, 3907 head, neck, facial (HNF) cricket injuries were treated in Victorian hospitals. The number of HNF cricket injuries substantially increased in the 2014/15 season from 367 to 435 injuries and remained over 400 in the subsequent years. More injuries were reported for male compared to female participants, 3583 compared to 324 injuries. When adjusted for participation in competitive cricket, the injury incidence rate was 1.3 per 1000 participants for males and 0.4 per 1000 participants for females. The 10−14 year age group most frequently required hospital treatment. Open wounds were the most common type of injury (1166, 29.8%) and the main mechanism for HNF cricket injury for this decade was hit/struck/crush (3361, 86.0%). Conclusions: This study provides a novel and current insight of the incidence and details of HNF injuries among cricket participants in Victoria over a decade. It is evident that males and younger participants, regardless of gender, have a higher risk of sustaining a HNF injury. This study provides a solid evidence base for stakeholders in developing strategies to minimise head, neck and facial injuries to make cricket a safe sport for all. © 2020 Sports Medicine Australia

A multi-objective deep reinforcement learning framework

- Nguyen, Thanh, Nguyen, Ngoc, Vamplew, Peter, Nahavandi, Saeid, Dazeley, Richard, Lim, Chee

  • Authors: Nguyen, Thanh , Nguyen, Ngoc , Vamplew, Peter , Nahavandi, Saeid , Dazeley, Richard , Lim, Chee
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence Vol. 96, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: This paper introduces a new scalable multi-objective deep reinforcement learning (MODRL) framework based on deep Q-networks. We develop a high-performance MODRL framework that supports both single-policy and multi-policy strategies, as well as both linear and non-linear approaches to action selection. The experimental results on two benchmark problems (two-objective deep sea treasure environment and three-objective Mountain Car problem) indicate that the proposed framework is able to find the Pareto-optimal solutions effectively. The proposed framework is generic and highly modularized, which allows the integration of different deep reinforcement learning algorithms in different complex problem domains. This therefore overcomes many disadvantages involved with standard multi-objective reinforcement learning methods in the current literature. The proposed framework acts as a testbed platform that accelerates the development of MODRL for solving increasingly complicated multi-objective problems. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

A new insight into the profitability of social housing in Australia : a real options approach

- Conteh, Augustine, Earl, George, Liu, Benjamin, Roca, Eduardo

  • Authors: Conteh, Augustine , Earl, George , Liu, Benjamin , Roca, Eduardo
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Habitat International Vol. 105, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: There is an acute shortage of social housing in Australia; hence, the supply of social housing needs to be increased. The government, however, lacks the necessary resources to adequately respond to this need. Additionally, the level of private institutional investment in social housing is currently low as social housing investments are perceived to be illiquid, high risk, and with low returns. Through a case study on a social housing renewal project in Garbutt, Townsville, Australia, this paper demonstrates that with the application of the Real Option approach, the profitability of the social housing project is actually significantly higher, compared to what they have been shown to be when traditional methods, such as the net present value, are used. This study offers new insight into the profitability of social housing, which has important implications for policymakers and private sector investors and is the first of its kind in the Australian social housing literature. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

A novel strategy to balance the results of cross-modal hashing

- Zhong, Fangming, Chen, Zhikui, Min, Geyong, Xia, Feng

  • Authors: Zhong, Fangming , Chen, Zhikui , Min, Geyong , Xia, Feng
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Pattern Recognition Vol. 107, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: Hashing methods for cross-modal retrieval has drawn increasing research interests and has been widely studied in recent years due to the explosive growth of multimedia big data. However, a significant phenomenon which has been ignored is that there is a large gap between the results of cross-modal hashing in most cases. For example, the results of Text-to-Image frequently outperform that of Image-to-Text with a large margin. In this paper, we propose a strategy named semantic augmentation to improve and balance the results of cross-modal hashing. An intermediate semantic space is constructed to re-align the feature representations that embedded with weak semantic information. By using the intermediate semantic space, the semantic information of visual features can be further augmented before being sent to cross-modal hashing algorithms. Extensive experiments are carried out on four datasets via seven state-of-the-art cross-modal hashing methods. Compared against the results without semantic augmentation, the Image-to-Text results of these methods with semantic augmentation are improved considerably, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed semantic augmentation strategy in bridging the gap between the results of cross-modal retrieval. Additional experiments are conducted on the real-valued, semi-supervised, semi-paired, partial-paired, and unpaired cross-modal retrieval methods, the results further indicates the effectiveness of our strategy in improving performance of cross-modal retrieval. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

A polygon scaled boundary finite element formulation for transient coupled thermoelastic fracture problems

- Ooi, Ean Tat, Iqbal, M., Birk, C., Natarajan, Sundararajan, Ooi, E. H., Song, C.

  • Authors: Ooi, Ean Tat , Iqbal, M. , Birk, C. , Natarajan, Sundararajan , Ooi, E. H. , Song, C.
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Engineering Fracture Mechanics Vol. 240, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: The scaled boundary finite element method is developed for transient thermoelastic fracture analysis. To enable this, a set of novel shape functions are derived considering thermoelastic equilibrium. The salient features of the proposed framework are: (a) can be formulated on polygons with an arbitrary number of sides leading to flexible mesh generation and (b) facilitates an accurate and direct evaluation of the stress intensity factors from their definition without resorting to any post-processing techniques using relatively coarse meshes. Several numerical benchmark problems demonstrate the aforementioned features of the technique. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

A review on the production of renewable aviation fuels from the gasification of biomass and residual wastes

- Shahabuddin, M., Alam, Md Tanvir, Krishna, Bhavya, Bhaskar, Thallada, Perkins, Greg

  • Authors: Shahabuddin, M. , Alam, Md Tanvir , Krishna, Bhavya , Bhaskar, Thallada , Perkins, Greg
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article , Review
  • Relation: Bioresource Technology Vol. 312, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: This article reviews the production of renewable aviation fuels from biomass and residual wastes using gasification followed by syngas conditioning and Fischer-Tropsch catalytic synthesis. The challenges involved with gasifying wastes are discussed along with a summary of conventional and emerging gasification technologies. The techniques for conditioning syngas including removal of particulate matter, tars, sulphur, carbon dioxide, compounds of nitrogen, chlorine and alkali metals are reported. Recent developments in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, such as new catalyst formulations are described alongside reactor technologies for producing renewable aviation fuels. The energy efficiency and capital cost of converting biomass and residual wastes to aviation fuels are major barriers to widespread adoption. Therefore, further development of advanced technologies will be critical for the aviation industry to achieve their stated greenhouse gas reduction targets by 2050. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

Advances in the thermo-chemical production of hydrogen from biomass and residual wastes : summary of recent techno-economic analyses

- Shahabuddin, M., Krishna, Bhuvya, Bhaskar, Thallada, Perkins, Greg

  • Authors: Shahabuddin, M. , Krishna, Bhuvya , Bhaskar, Thallada , Perkins, Greg
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article , Review
  • Relation: Bioresource Technology Vol. 299, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: This article outlines the prospects and challenges of hydrogen production from biomass and residual wastes, such as municipal solid waste. Recent advances in gasification and pyrolysis followed by reforming are discussed. The review finds that the thermal efficiency of hydrogen from gasification is ~50%. The levelized cost of hydrogen (LCOH) from biomass varies from ~2.3–5.2 USD/kg at feedstock processing scales of 10 MWth to ~2.8–3.4 USD/kg at scales above 250 MWth. Preliminary estimates are that the LCOH from residual wastes could be in the range of ~1.4–4.8 USD/kg, depending upon the waste gate fee and project scale. The main barriers to development of waste to hydrogen projects include: waste pre-treatment, technology maturity, syngas conditioning, the market for clean hydrogen, policies to incentivize pioneer projects and technology competitiveness. The main opportunity is to produce low cost clean hydrogen, which is competitive with alternative production routes. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

An efficient caching policy for content retrieval in autonomous connected vehicles

- Rahim, Muddasir, Javed, Muhammad, Alvi, Alvi, Imran, Muhammad

  • Authors: Rahim, Muddasir , Javed, Muhammad , Alvi, Alvi , Imran, Muhammad
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice Vol. 140, no. (2020), p. 142-152
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  • Description: Connected vehicles will enable the smart and autonomous transportation systems in the future. Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) communication will provide wireless connectivity to enable large number of connected vehicle applications. Vehicles will receive traffic and infotainment contents from the city traffic command center using C-V2X communications. In this context, infrastructure Road Side Units (RSUs) will cache urgent and popular data in their memory storage, hence providing vehicles to retrieve information from a closer vicinity at a RSU. In this paper, we present a content caching policy for the connected vehicles operator to improve the efficiency of the content retrieval in terms of download rate and delay. We propose the utility functions for the RSUs and vehicles to cache a particular content at a given RSU. Moreover, Gale-Shapley stable matching algorithm is used to efficiently allocate RSU cache to the contents. We also provide rules to update the cache slots. The proposed caching scheme is compared with random caching policy and market matching based caching policies. Results show that the proposed content caching policy improves the efficiency of the content retrieval with 60% more data transmission with reduced downloading time and better link utilization as compared to other two scheme. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd

An investigation of expertise in cycling : eye tracking, think aloud and the influence of a competitor

- Massey, Hollie, Whitehead, Amy, Marchant, David, Polman, Remco, Williams, Emily

  • Authors: Massey, Hollie , Whitehead, Amy , Marchant, David , Polman, Remco , Williams, Emily
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Psychology of Sport and Exercise Vol. 49, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: Objectives: Two studies investigated expert-novice differences in information-seeking behaviour, cognitions and performance during cycling time trials (TT). Study 1 examined trained and novice cyclist's cognitions whilst performing a TT, using a Think Aloud (TA) protocol and eye-tracking techniques. Study 2 investigated expertise differences during alone and competitive TTs. Methods: in Study 1, six trained and seven novice cyclists performed a 16.1 km TT. In Study 2, eight trained and ten novice cyclists performed three 16.1 km TT; a baseline TT, an alone TT and a trial against a virtual competitor. In both studies, participants were asked to TA and in Study 1 they also wore mobile gaze-tracking glasses. Performance feedback and a simulated TT course were visually displayed during all trials, as was a virtual avatar during the competitor trial. Verbalisations were coded into primary and secondary themes. Cognitions and pacing strategies were compared between groups and across the duration of the TTs. In Study 1, eye-tracking data for total dwell time and gaze frequency were calculated for each area of interest (Time Elapsed, Power, Heart Rate, Cadence, Distance Covered, Speed and Course Scenery). Results: In Study 1, no significant differences were found in information-seeking behaviour between groups, however there were expertise differences in the cognitive strategies used. Trained cyclists’ verbalisations were more performance-relevant (i.e., power output), whereas the untrained group were more focused on task completion (i.e., distance and time) and irrelevant information. Both groups talked more about distance and motivational thoughts in the later stages of the trial, and dwell time on distance feedback also increased in this final 4 km. In Study 2, the trained group performed faster than the untrained group but there were no significant differences in pace or performance between alone and competitive TTs for either group. Differences in cognitions were found between groups and across the TT duration. Conclusion: Both studies demonstrate that cognitive processes differ as a function of expertise during self-paced cycling time trials. There were no differences in information-seeking behaviour between trained and untrained cyclists and there was no effect of an opponent on pace or performance. © 2020

Associations of behavioral inhibition system with negatively biased social cognitions : moderation by the behavioral approach system

- Gomez, Rapson, Watson, Shaun, Stavropoulos, Vasileios

  • Authors: Gomez, Rapson , Watson, Shaun , Stavropoulos, Vasileios
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Personality and Individual Differences Vol. 166, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: Using the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and behavioral approach system (BAS) subscales of the BIS/BAS Scales (Carver & White, 1994), this study examined how the association of the BIS and the negatively biased social cognitions of social comparison, social ineptness, negative self-statements, and fear of negative evaluation, were moderated by BAS-Drive and BAS-Reward Responsiveness. A total of 302 (males = 101, females = 201) adults (age ranging from 18 to 65 years) from the general community completed questionnaires covering the different study variables. The findings indicted moderation by BAS-D for the predictions of social comparison, social ineptness, and negative self-statements, and moderation by BAS-RR for the predictions of social ineptness, negative self-statements, and fear of negative evaluation. For moderation effects, moderation was present at lower levels of BAS-D, and at higher levels of BAS-RR. © 2020

Biodiesels from three feedstock : The effect of graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles diesel engine parameters fuelled with biodiesel

- Hoseini, Seyed, Najafi, Gholamhassan, Ghobadian, Barat, Ebadi, Mohammad, Mamat, Rizalman, Yusaf, Talal

  • Authors: Hoseini, Seyed , Najafi, Gholamhassan , Ghobadian, Barat , Ebadi, Mohammad , Mamat, Rizalman , Yusaf, Talal
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Renewable Energy Vol. 145, no. (2020), p. 190-201
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  • Description: Physicochemical characteristics of three type biodiesel feedstock and diesel engine parameters fuelled with graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles addition in diesel/biodiesel blends have been investigated. Three types of oilseeds, namely Evening primrose (Oenothera lamarckiana), the fruit of Tree of heaven (Ailanthus altissima) and Camelina (Camelina sativa), were selected as suitable resources for Iran. The result showed that the Tree of heaven contains 38% oil which is higher than the Evening primrose (26%) and Camelina (29%). Physicochemical properties of the oils showed that the viscosity of the Camelina oilseeds was less than the Tree of heaven oilseeds and Evening primrose oilseeds. Therefore, in terms of viscosity, the Camelina oilseeds is preferable. Experimental results showed that the biodiesel from all three types of oilseeds are consistent with the ASTM biodiesel standards. However, Camelina biodiesel has better physicochemical properties than another feedstock. Therefore, biodiesel of Camelina oil can be an appropriate alternative to diesel fuels in Iran. Performance and emission parameters of diesel engine fuelled with graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles addition in three biodiesel resources compared with diesel. A reduction in UHCs, CO, and BSFC with a penalty of increased NOx emissions was realized with all graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles addition in diesel/biodiesel blends. Also, with Camelina biodiesel, the power increased.

Blockchain for cloud exchange : a survey

- Xie, Shaoan, Zheng, Zibin, Chen, Weili, Wu, Jiajing, Dai, Hong-Ning, Imran, Muhammad

  • Authors: Xie, Shaoan , Zheng, Zibin , Chen, Weili , Wu, Jiajing , Dai, Hong-Ning , Imran, Muhammad
  • Date: 2020
  • Type: Text , Journal article
  • Relation: Computers and Electrical Engineering Vol. 81, no. (2020), p.
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  • Description: Compared with single cloud service providers, cloud exchange provides users with lower price and flexible options. However, conventional cloud exchange markets are suffering from a number of challenges such as central architecture being vulnerable to malicious attacks and cheating behaviours of third-party auctioneers. The recent advances in blockchain technologies bring the opportunities to overcome the limitations of cloud exchange. However, the integration of blockchain with cloud exchange is still in infancy and extensive research efforts are needed to tackle a number of research challenges. To bridge this gap, this paper presents an overview on using blockchain for cloud exchange. In particular, we first give an overview on cloud exchange. We then briefly survey blockchain technology and discuss the issues on using blockchain for cloud exchange in aspects of security, privacy, reputation systems and transaction management. Finally, we present the open research issues in this promising area. © 2019