scholarly journals From advanced aircraft design to drug delivery

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-85
Author(s):  
Nikolaus (Prof. Dr.-Ing.) A. Adams

From advanced aircraft design to drug delivery The ‘NANOSHOCK’ research project aims at providing computational methods for fundamental physical discovery to study shockwave-driven phenomena and exploit their technological potential. The main research question is how to manufacture shock interactions for innovative nanoscale processes. That includes the defined generation and control of shocks in complex environments such as living organisms to design drug-delivery techniques with high precision while minimising side effects. These goals are tackled by means of quantitative and predictive numerical simulations using the latest and novel computational methods.

Author(s):  
S.E. Donny Sita ◽  
N.A. Mohd. Nor

Earlier notions of leadership opined that leadership can be found in one's genes that determine how an individual behaves and reacts to his/her surrounding (Bass, 1985). That is, a leader can still be detected in a group of people although nobody may be appointed to lead at the outset. In the past, an individual became a leader through inheritance of a rank or the throne in a country or in an institution. However, the temperament or characteristic of an individual determine whether one can lead or not. A leader acts as a conflict contributor, a resolver or peacemaker, and a punisher (King et al., 2009). Besides being dominant over the rest of the group members, a leader needs to influence the followers too with his/her leadership style. The leadership style of a leader depends on the attitude of him/her to influencing followers in the organisation. The modern era indicates that an uncertainty or complex situations are not uncommon. In a context of a small and medium enterprises (SMEs), turbulences arising in an enterprise require an effective leader to sustain a strong sense of opportunity for all followers. Such participation allows followers to share opinions, make better decisions and control the resources. In fact, followers and the leader cannot be separated. Likewise, leadership runs in tandem with development. Development occurs as leadership pushes it (Banyai, 2009). Hence, without proper leadership to lead the followers, it would be rather difficult to reach the mutual goals of the enterprise (Poskas & Messer, 2015). Also, a good leadership through guidance and effective communication enables followers to improve themselves. Hence, to conduct a relevant systematic review, the current paper is guided by the following main research question: how are leadership styles practiced among leaders in the context of small and medium enterprises? The focus of this paper is on the leaders of small and medium enterprises where followers are working together towards achieving the mutual goals of the enterprise. Keywords: leader; leadership style; PRISMA; small and medium enterprises; systematic literature review


Author(s):  
Ana Pop Stefanija ◽  
Jo Pierson

If users are being $2 algorithms, and companies and regulators are proposing ways for $2 algorithms, with this paper we would like to discuss and propose a third type of governance — one where users have agency, control and governing power(s) over algorithmic systems and their outputs. Our main research question is how do we enable users to actively govern algorithms, instead of passively being governed by them? And what do the users need in order to be algorithmically governed in such a way that will enable more agency, autonomy and control when interacting with AI systems and their outputs. Instead of getting insights in an abstract way, to answer this question, we opted for a guided and supportive process where participants were able to reflect on the process, formulate and elaborate their insights, thoughts, needs and requirements based on their lived experience, i.e., after a real interaction with these algorithmic systems. We conducted a participatory technographic research with 47 participants, through a multi-stage process consisting of a survey, Subject Access Requests (Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation), purposeful interaction with the transparency tools of seven chosen platforms and extensive structured research diaries. A quali-quantitative analysis of the insights enabled us to formulate the participants’ requirements of $2 and $2 in a way that will enable their agency, control and autonomy. These requirements are translatable and implementable at a user-interaction level, via technology design and through regulatory mechanisms


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 505-529
Author(s):  
Geert-Jan Alexander Knoops

AbstractThis article deals with the question whether and how to assess superior responsibility within irregular (guerrilla) warfare; based on the principles developed by the international criminal tribunals on the area of superior responsibility for regular forces. In particular the article examines whether those criteria are useful to apply to guerrilla warfare. Specific problems, typical for guerrilla warfare, are analyzed such as the organizational level, the exercise of effective command and control, the assessment of the mens rea criterion within a complex situation of guerrilla warfare. Additionally, the material ability to prevent or punish crimes within guerrilla forces seems a point of concern in view of the absence of proper disciplinary systems within this type of warfare. Recent case law of the ICTY is taken into account in order to arrive at an answer to the main research question.


Author(s):  
Vera Yakubson ◽  
Victor Zakharov

This paper deals with the specialized corpora building, specifically academic language corpus in the biotechnology field. Being a part of larger research devoted to creation and usage of specialized parallel corpus, this piece aims to analyze the initial step of corpus building. Our main research question was what procedures we need to implement to the texts before using them to develop the corpus. Analysis of previous research showed the significant quantity of papers devoted to corpora creation, including academic specialized corpora. Different sides of the process were analyzed in these researches, including the types of texts used, the principles of crawling, the recommended length of texts etc. As to the text processing for the needs of corpora creation, only the linguistic annotation issues were examined earlier. At the same time, the preliminary cleaning of texts before their usage in corpora may have significant influence on the corpus quality and its utility for the linguistic research. In this paper, we considered three small corpora derived from the same set of academic texts in the biotechnology field: “raw” corpus without any preliminary cleaning and two corpora with different level of cleaning. Using different Sketch Engine tools, we analyzed these corpora from the position of their future users, predominantly as sources for academic wordlists and specialized multi-word units. The conducted research showed very little difference between two cleaned corpora, meaning that only basic cleaning procedures such as removal of reference lists are can be useful in corpora design. At the same time, we found a significant difference between raw and cleaned corpora and argue that this difference can affect the quality of wordlists and multi-word terms extraction, therefore these cleaning procedures are meaningful. The main limitation of the study is that all texts were taken from the unique source, so the conclusions could be affected by this specific journal’s peculiarities. Therefore, the future work should be the verification of results on different text collections


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1/2020) ◽  
pp. 33-67
Author(s):  
Olga Stevanovic

The subject of this paper encompasses US policy towards Poland and the Baltic States regarding energy security during Donald Trump’s presidency. It is discernible that vast domestic energy resources have created an opportunity for the US to project more power to these countries, and the surrounding region. We argue that Trump and his administration’s perceptions have served as an intervening variable in that opportunity assessment, in accordance with the neoclassical realist theory. The main research question addressed in this paper is whether US has used that opportunity to contribute to energy security in countries it has traditionally deemed as allies. Two aspects of US approach to energy security of the designated countries are taken into consideration: liquified natural gas exports and support for the Three Seas Initiative. The way Trump presented his policy and its results in his public statements has also been considered in this paper. The article will proceed as follows. The first subsection of the paper represents a summary of energy security challenges in Poland and the Baltic States. The second subsection is dedicated to the opportunity for the US to project energy power and to Trump’s perceptions relevant for the opportunity assessment. The third subsection deals with American LNG exports to these countries as a possible way for contributing to energy security in Poland and the Baltic States. The last part of the paper addresses the Three Seas Initiative and US approach to this platform.


The control of movement is essential for animals traversing complex environments and operating across a range of speeds and gaits. We consider how animals process sensory information and initiate motor responses, primarily focusing on simple motor responses that involve local reflex pathways of feedback and control, rather than the more complex, longer-term responses that require the broader integration of higher centers within the nervous system. We explore how local circuits facilitate decentralized coordination of locomotor rhythm and examine the fundamentals of sensory receptors located in the muscles, tendons, joints, and at the animal’s body surface. These sensors monitor the animal’s physical environment and the action of its muscles. The sensory information is then carried back to the animal’s nervous system by afferent neurons, providing feedback that is integrated at the level of the spinal cord of vertebrates and sensory-motor ganglia of invertebrates.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fariba Mostajeran ◽  
Jessica Krzikawski ◽  
Frank Steinicke ◽  
Simone Kühn

AbstractA large number of studies have demonstrated the benefits of natural environments on people’s health and well-being. For people who have limited access to nature (e.g., elderly in nursing homes, hospital patients, or jail inmates), virtual representations may provide an alternative to benefit from the illusion of a natural environment. For this purpose and in most previous studies, conventional photos of nature have been used. Immersive virtual reality (VR) environments, however, can induce a higher sense of presence compared to conventional photos. Whether this higher sense of presence leads to increased positive impacts of virtual nature exposure is the main research question of this study. Therefore, we compared exposure to a forest and an urban virtual environment in terms of their respective impact on mood, stress, physiological reactions, and cognition. The environments were presented via a head-mounted display as (1) conventional photo slideshows or (2) 360$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ videos. The results show that the forest environment had a positive effect on cognition and the urban environment disturbed mood regardless of the mode of presentation. In addition, photos of either urban or forest environment were both more effective in reducing physiological arousal compared to immersive 360$$^{\circ }$$ ∘ videos.


2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roksolana Mykhaylyk ◽  
Elinor Ytterstad

Aims and research questions: This paper presents a new study addressing the issue of cross-linguistic influence in acquisition of referring expressions. The main research question is how to predict directionality of this influence in a dual language development. Methodology: The method is an elicited production task. We consider the phenomenon of direct object referring choices, i.e. noun, pronoun and null element, in a ‘null-object’–‘overt-object’ language pair (Ukrainian and English). Data and Analysis: Participants of the experiment are 4–6-year-old Ukrainian–English bilinguals (N20) and Ukrainian monolinguals (N21). The data are analyzed in the statistical program R, utilizing the R-library function lme4. The results are presented as odds ratios (ORs) of each direct object type. Findings: Our data reveal that while there is no significant difference in Ukrainian object types in most of the age groups, there is a considerable amount of null object usage in English at the ages of four to five. Originality: The innovative nature of this study lies in: (i) the consideration of a licit object omission at a later stage of language development (from 4 to 6 years of age); (ii) the examination of an under-investigated language combination (i.e. English and Ukrainian); and (iii) the innovative approach to linguistic data analysis (e.g. comparing OR values). Implications: Our findings suggest that the directionality of influence in dual language acquisition depends on the developmental stage, language-specific means of syntax–pragmatics interaction, and extra-linguistic input-related factors. At the early stages of development, the null-object language is likely to influence the overt-object language, especially under conditions of limited exposure to the latter.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 997
Author(s):  
Livija Tušar ◽  
Aleksandra Usenik ◽  
Boris Turk ◽  
Dušan Turk

Protein inhibitors of proteases are an important tool of nature to regulate and control proteolysis in living organisms under physiological and pathological conditions. In this review, we analyzed the mechanisms of inhibition of cysteine proteases on the basis of structural information and compiled kinetic data. The gathered structural data indicate that the protein fold is not a major obstacle for the evolution of a protease inhibitor. It appears that nature can convert almost any starting fold into an inhibitor of a protease. In addition, there appears to be no general rule governing the inhibitory mechanism. The structural data make it clear that the “lock and key” mechanism is a historical concept with limited validity. However, the analysis suggests that the shape of the active site cleft of proteases imposes some restraints. When the S1 binding site is shaped as a pocket buried in the structure of protease, inhibitors can apply substrate-like binding mechanisms. In contrast, when the S1 binding site is in part exposed to solvent, the substrate-like inhibition cannot be employed. It appears that all proteases, with the exception of papain-like proteases, belong to the first group of proteases. Finally, we show a number of examples and provide hints on how to engineer protein inhibitors.


2013 ◽  
pp. 75-105
Author(s):  
Vida Cesnuityte

The aim of the research presented in the paper is to explore the inter-relations between care processes and personal social networks as social capital in the light of the changing family models. Research of interdependence of care, social capital and family models is based on the idea of family practices suggested by Morgan. The main research question is what family practices of various family models create such social capital that ensure caring for its' members? The research hypothesis is that participation in various activities together with family members and persons beyond nuclear and extended family create dense social networks of caregivers. The analysis is based on data of representative quantitative survey carried out in Lithuania between 2011 November-2012 May within the ESF supported research project "Trajectories of family models and social networks: intergenerational perspective". Research results only partly support this hypothesis: particular family practices create networks of caregivers, but in order to involve particular persons into network of caregivers, different family practices in various family models are needed. Usually, inhabitants of Lithuania primarily expect to receive care from persons who depend to nuclear family created through marriage and extended family arisen from this relation. But persons from whom it is expected to receive care and care received differ in Lithuania. In reality, caregivers usually are children in families with children and parents in families without children. Family practices that create social networks of caregivers, and are common for all family models include annual feasts like Christmas Eve, Christmas, Easter, All Soul's Day, New Year party, Mother's Day. Various family practices differently impacting creation social networks of caregivers for different family models but usually its include joint dinner daily, Sunday lunch together, vacations with family, communication face-toface, by the telephone or Internet, consultations on important decision-making, All Soul's Day feast, Christmas celebration, Mother's Day, Gatherings of relatives, Birthday, Name-day feast, visiting cultural event together.


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