Determinants of housing policy in large cities of Ukraine

The article presents housing policy, especially in big cities of Ukraine, in the context of current economic conditions and the increasing number of unresolved problems in the sphere of housing construction. The proposed approach to the analysis of the problems of urban housing policy is based on the Five Dimensions Model (L-F-U-G-T). Determination of principles and ways of solving housing problems in urban areas is used in formulating recommendations for the new housing policy. Verification of the proposed methodological tools has been carried out on the example of the city of Lviv.W artykule została przedstawiona polityka mieszkaniowa, szczególnie w dużych miastach Ukrainy w kontekście obecnych warunków gospodarczych oraz wzrastającej liczby nierozwiązanych problemów w sferze budownictwa mieszkaniowego. Proponowane podejście do analizy problemów miejskiej polityki mieszkaniowej opiera się na modelu przestrzeni pięciowymiarowej (L-F-U-G-T). Określenie zasad i sposobów rozwiązywania problemów mieszkaniowych w strefach miejskich służy sformułowaniu rekomendacji na potrzeby nowej polityki mieszkaniowej. Weryfikacja proponowanych narzędzi metodologicznych została przeprowadzona na przykładzie miasta Lwowa

Satellite downlink scheduling problem: A case study

The synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology enables satellites to efficiently acquire high quality images of the Earth surface. This generates significant communication traffic from the satellite to the ground stations, and, thus, image downlinking often becomes the bottleneck in the efficiency of the whole system. In this paper we address the downlink scheduling problem for Canada's Earth observing SAR satellite, RADARSAT-2. Being an applied problem, downlink scheduling is characterised with a number of constraints that make it difficult not only to optimise the schedule but even to produce a feasible solution. We propose a fast schedule generation procedure that abstracts the problem specific constraints and provides a simple interface to optimisation algorithms. By comparing empirically several standard meta-heuristics applied to the problem, we select the most suitable one and show that it is clearly superior to the approach currently in use.Comment: 23 page

The convergence of the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) : a self-contained proof

We give here a proof of the convergence of the Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) in a self-contained manner

Long term aging effect on the creep strength of the T92 steel

International audienceCreep strength loss of T92 steel after long-term creep exposure at 600°C and 650°C is partially due to a thermal aging of the steel during the first part of the test. In order to quantify the effect of long-term aging on the creep strength loss, creep tests were conducted at 600 and 650°C on T92 steel thermally aged for 10,000h at the same temperature and on as-received T92 steel. Laves phases precipitates were found after thermal aging at 600°C and 650°C with an average equivalent diameter of about 200nm and of about 350nm, respectively. No significant change in hardness and in the matrix substructure as revealed by electron backscatter diffraction occurred during aging. For stresses higher than 170MPa at 600°C and higher than 110MPa at 650°C the time to rupture is four times lower in the aged steels compared to the as-received steel, this is correlated to a secondary creep rate four times higher for the aged specimens compared to that of the as-received steel. Creep tests conducted at 650°C under lower stresses revealed a creep lifetime only twice lower after aging

Oral surgery biomaterials: analyses of Al2O3-treated titanium surfaces tested with fibroblast and osteocyte cell lines

Two different cell lines - MLO-Y4 (murine osteocytes) and 293 (human fibroblasts) - cultured for 48 hours in standard media were used to analyse engineered bio-materials (i.e. Al2O3 shot-peened titanium surfaces). Distribution, density and expression of adhesion molecules (fibronectin and vitronectin) were evaluated under scanning electron microscope (SEM) and confocal microscope (CM) as previously described [1]. The engineered biomaterial surfaces showed under SEM irregular morphology displaying variously-shaped spicules, obtained by shooting different-in-size particles of Al2O3 against the scaffolds of biomaterial. DAPI and fluorochrome-conjugated antibodies were used to highlight nuclei, fibronectin and vitronectin, under CM; cell distribution was analysed after Gold-Palladium sputtering of samples by SEM. Both SEM and CM observations showed better outcome in terms of cell adhesion and distribution in treated titanium surfaces with respect to the untreated ones. The results obtained clearly showed that this kind of surface-treated titanium, used to manufacture devices for dental implantology: i) is very suitable for cell colonization, essential prerequisite for the best osseointegration, and ii) represents an excellent solution for the development of further engineered implants with the target to obtain recovery of dental function stable over time. Further studies on these Al2O3 shot-peened-titanium surfaces, both in vitro and in vivo, will be needed to obtain accurate definition of better biomaterial outcome, also after additional treatments. References [1] Palumbo et al. (2013) Immunocytochemical and structural comparative study of committed versus multipotent stem cells cultured with different biomaterials. Micron 47: 1–9

Service-oriented system engineering

Service-Oriented System Engineering (SOSE) is one of the emerging research areas that involves a number of research challenges in engineering service-oriented systems, the architecture and computing paradigm as well as the development and management of service-oriented systems. Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) exploits services as the fundamental elements for developing computer-based systems. It has been applied to various areas and promotes fundamental changes to system architecture, especially changing the way software systems are being analyzed, architected, designed, implemented, tested, evaluated, delivered, consumed, maintained and evolved. The innovations of SOC also offer many interesting avenues of research for scientific and industrial communities. In this paper, we present the concepts of the SOSE from the related work. The motivation, opportunities and challenges of the SOSE is highlighted thereafter. In addition to this, a brief overview of accepted papers in our Special Issue on SOSE is presented. Finally we highlight and summarize this paper.N/

MENINGOCOCCAL MENINGITIS IN ETHIOPIA 1974.1983 AND STRATEGIES OF CONTROL

ABSTRACT Ethiopia lies in the eastern part of the African cerebrospinal meningitis belt, but the existence of seasonal epidemic of this dangerous diseases has only been recognized since 1974. In the last decade, epidemic" have occurred every year in at least two region.! in northwestern Ethiopia. This study review" the experience" of three period. During 1974-1976, the region affected were identified and health workers began to appreciate the seriousness of meningitis. There were major epidemic" in 1977 and 1981. More epidemiological studies were done, active and passive "surveillance begun, polyvalent vaccine (A+C) introduced and field treatment of patients proved effective. Much lower case fatality rate" in the 1982 and 1983 outbreak showed the value of these measure. Equally important has been the active participation at all level of government and non government agencies and the communities themselves. Each region is now self sufficient in early detection and management of epidemic". Meningitis control in Ethiopia is a successful example of the primary health care approac

A decomposition algorithm for robust lot sizing problem with remanufacturing option

In this paper, we propose a decomposition procedure for constructing robust optimal production plans for reverse inventory systems. Our method is motivated by the need of overcoming the excessive computational time requirements, as well as the inaccuracies caused by imprecise representations of problem parameters. The method is based on a min-max formulation that avoids the excessive conservatism of the dualization technique employed by Wei et al. (2011). We perform a computational study using our decomposition framework on several classes of computer generated test instances and we report our experience. Bienstock and Özbay (2008) computed optimal base stock levels for the traditional lot sizing problem when the production cost is linear and we extend this work here by considering return inventories and setup costs for production. We use the approach of Bertsimas and Sim (2004) to model the uncertainties in the input

Robust and Pareto Optimality of Insurance Contract

The optimal insurance problem represents a fast growing topic that explains the most efficient contract that an insurance player may get. The classical problem investigates the ideal contract under the assumption that the underlying risk distribution is known, i.e. by ignoring the parameter and model risks. Taking these sources of risk into account, the decision-maker aims to identify a robust optimal contract that is not sensitive to the chosen risk distribution. We focus on Value-at-Risk (VaR) and Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR)-based decisions, but further extensions for other risk measures are easily possible. The Worst-case scenario and Worst-case regret robust models are discussed in this paper, which have been already used in robust optimisation literature related to the investment portfolio problem. Closed-form solutions are obtained for the VaR Worst-case scenario case, while Linear Programming (LP) formulations are provided for all other cases. A caveat of robust optimisation is that the optimal solution may not be unique, and therefore, it may not be economically acceptable, i.e. Pareto optimal. This issue is numerically addressed and simple numerical methods are found for constructing insurance contracts that are Pareto and robust optimal. Our numerical illustrations show weak evidence in favour of our robust solutions for VaR-decisions, while our robust methods are clearly preferred for CVaR-based decisions

HUKUMAN TERHADAP PIDANA KORUPSI (STUDI KASUS: DI PENGADILAN NEGERI MEDAN)

Penelitian ini menganalisis pertimbangan hakim dalam putusan kasus korupsi di Pengadilan Negeri Medan, dengan fokus pada aspek yuridis yang mendasarinya. Kasus korupsi merupakan isu krusial yang mempengaruhi integritas sistem hukum dan kepercayaan masyarakat. Melalui pendekatan kualitatif, penelitian ini mengkaji putusan-putusan yang ada serta mengumpulkan Artikel untuk memahami faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi pertimbangan hukum. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa meskipun hakim mempertimbangkan fakta dan bukti yang diajukan, terdapat inkonsistensi dalam penerapan norma hukum yang berujung pada keputusan yang bervariasi untuk kasus serupa. Hal ini menimbulkan tantangan terhadap keadilan dan kepastian hukum. Dampak dari keputusan hakim tidak hanya dirasakan oleh pelaku korupsi, tetapi juga berdampak pada kepercayaan publik terhadap lembaga peradilan. Penelitian ini menyarankan perlunya pengembangan pedoman yang lebih jelas dalam penanganan kasus korupsi dan pelatihan bagi hakim untuk meningkatkan kualitas dan konsistensi putusan. Dengan demikian, diharapkan analisis ini dapat berkontribusi pada peningkatan efektivitas penegakan hukum di Indonesi