Spatiotemporal Associations between Local Safety Level Index and COVID-19 Infection Risks across Capital Regions in South Korea

This study aims provide understanding of the local-level spatiotemporal evolution of COVID-19 spread across capital regions of South Korea during the second and third waves of the pandemic (August 2020~June 2021). To explain transmission, we rely upon the local safety level indices along with latent influences from the spatial alignment of municipalities and their serial (temporal) correlation. Utilizing a flexible hierarchical Bayesian model as an analytic operational framework, we exploit the modified BYM (BYM2) model with the Penalized Complexity (PC) priors to account for latent effects (unobserved heterogeneity). The outcome reveals that a municipality with higher population density is likely to have an elevated infection risk, whereas one with good preparedness for infectious disease tends to have a reduction in risk. Furthermore, we identify that including spatial and temporal correlations into the modeling framework significantly improves the performance and explanatory power, justifying our adoption of latent effects. Based on these findings, we present the dynamic evolution of COVID-19 across the Seoul Capital Area (SCA), which helps us verify unique patterns of disease spread as well as regions of elevated risk for further policy intervention and for supporting informed decision making for responding to infectious diseases.

Determination of Mercury, Methylmercury and Selenium Concentrations in Elasmobranch Meat: Fish Consumption Safety

This study measures total mercury (THg), methylmercury (MeHg) and selenium (Se) concentrations in elasmobranch fish from an Italian market with the aim of evaluating the risk-benefit associated with their consumption, using estimated weekly intake (EWI), permissible safety level (MeHgPSL), selenium health benefit value (HBVSe) and monthly consumption rate limit (CRmm) for each species. THg and Se were analysed by atomic absorption spectrometry, while MeHg was determined by HrGc/Ms. THg and MeHg concentrations ranged from 0.61 to 1.25 μg g−1 w.w. and from 0.57 to 0.97 μg g−1 w.w., respectively, whereas Se levels were 0.49–0.65 μg g−1 w.w. In most samples European Community limits for THg were surpassed, while for MeHg none of the fish had levels above the limit adopted by FAO/WHO. EWIs for THg and MeHg in many cases were above the provisional tolerable weekly intakes (PTWIs). MeHgPSL estimate showed that fish should contain approximately 50% of the concentration measured to avoid exceeding the PTWI. Nevertheless, the HBVSe index indicated that solely skates were safe for human consumption (HBVSe = 3.57–6.22). Our results highlight the importance of a constant monitoring of THg and MeHg level in fish, especially in apex predators, to avoid the risk of overexposure for consumers.

Refining Vegetable Oils: Chemical and Physical Refining

This review presents recent technologies involved in vegetable oil refining as well as quality attributes of crude oils obtained by mechanical and solvent extraction. Usually, apart from virgin oils, crude oils cannot be consumed directly or incorporated into various food applications without technological treatments (refining). Indeed, crude oils like soybean, rapeseed, palm, corn, and sunflower oils must be purified or refined before consumption. The objective of such treatments (chemical and physical refining) is to get a better quality, a more acceptable aspect (limpidity), a lighter odor and color, longer stability, and good safety through the elimination of pollutants while minimizing oil loss during processing. However, the problem is that refining removes some essential nutrients and often generates other undesirable compounds such as 3-MCPD-esters and trans-fatty acids. These compounds directly influence the safety level of refined oil. Advantages and drawbacks of both chemical and physical refining were discussed in the light of recent literature. Physical refining has several advantages over chemical one.

Survey and Design Consistency Evaluation in Two-Lane Rural Road Segments

The present research proposes a time and cost-effective methodology to survey and perform a design consistency evaluation in two-lane rural road segments. The implementation of the proposed methodology carried out in Central Greece and more particularly along the national road Volos-Karditsa, from the local community Mikrothives up to the entrance of the Volos municipal unit. The road survey methodology, the process of creating the terrain model as well as the cross-check between the designed road with the requirements included in the Greek Road Design Guidelines Manual-Chapter X, are analytically presented. Similar checks are also performed for the sight distance throughout the road segments aiming to enable the rehabilitation of existing rural roads and enhance their safety level. The design of the road was followed by the execution of an experiment with the participation of a motorcycle rider aiming at the recording of his trajectory throughout the road which was then compared with its geometry. The experiment carried out by exploiting an instrumented vehicle and GPS technology. Several conclusions were drawn regarding the encroachment of the centerline and the deviation from the theoretical trajectory in the middle of the travelled way. Subsequently, the proposed methodology provides a reliable and simple solution of surveying and evaluating a 2-lane rural road in safety terms.

Mobile Robots and Cobots Integration: A Preliminary Design of a Mechatronic Interface by Using MBSE Approach

Enabling technologies that drive Industry 4.0 and smart factories are pushing in new equipment and system development also to prevent human workers from repetitive and non-ergonomic tasks inside manufacturing plants. One of these tasks is the order-picking which consists in collecting parts from the warehouse and distributing them among the workstations and vice-versa. That task can be completely performed by a Mobile Manipulator that is composed by an industrial manipulator assembled on a Mobile Robot. Although the Mobile Manipulators implementation brings advantages to industrial applications, they are still not widely used due to the lack of dedicated standards on control and safety. Furthermore, there are few integrated solutions and no specific or reference point allowing the safe integration of mobile robots and cobots (already owned by company). This work faces the integration of a generic mobile robot and collaborative robot selected from an identified set of both systems. The paper presents a safe and flexible mechatronic interface developed by using MBSE principles, multi-domain modeling, and adopting preliminary assumptions on the hardware and software synchronization level of both involved systems. The interface enables the re-using of owned robot systems differently from their native tasks. Furthermore, it provides an additional and redundant safety level by enabling power and force limiting both during cobot positioning and control system faulting.

Influence of the supplementary reinforcement on the shear strength of beams with prefabricated truss stirrups

abstract: This paper presents the results of seven experimental tests in reinforced concrete wide beams, aiming to investigate their performance when subjected to shear, using prefabricated truss stirrups as shear reinforcement, as well as a supplementary reinforcement to control cracks by delamination. The main analysed variables were: position of the supplementary reinforcement, inclination of the shear reinforcement, and spacing between stirrups. Results showed that strength increments of up to 142% were obtained using the prefabricated truss stirrups. Furthermore, the experimental results were compared with the theoretical shear strength estimates of the tested beams, following the recommendations of NBR 6118 (2014), Eurocode 2 (2004), and ACI 318 (2014), in order to evaluate the safety level of these codes when designing concrete elements subjected to shear with the reinforcement used in this paper.

Fault-Tolerant Secure Routing of B H n -Based Data Center Networks

As the core infrastructure of cloud computing, a large scale of the data center networks (DCNs), which consist of millions of servers with high capacity, suffer from node failure such that the reliability is deteriorated. Malicious group could inevitably compromise the quality and reliability of data; thus, how to ensure the security routing of data is an urgent practical problem. As models for large-scale DCNs, it is worth mentioning the balanced hypercube, which is well-known for its strong connectivity, regularity, and a smaller diameter. Each of which makes a balanced hypercube a trustworthy model to deal with data traffic and provides a certain degree of fault-tolerance as well. In this paper, we use the balanced hypercube as a model for the data center networks and design a reliable safety level by referring to different safety levels of related subgraph. This subgraph contains the source and destination nodes, and the shortest feasible paths are located so that the reliable transmission is achieved. Then, we get that the length of fault-tolerant safety routing of data center networks based on balanced hypercube is always no greater than the Hamming distance plus two. Experiment shows that our fault-tolerant security routing scheme is more effective in the same reliable network environment of DCNs.