Academic literature on the topic 'Commune health stations'

The primary health care system in Vietnam has been playing an important role in prevention and control of diseases. This study aimed to describe the capacity of commune health stations in Chi Linh district, Hai Duong province for prevention and control of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). A mixed-methods (quantitative and qualitative approaches) approach was applied to collect data in 20 commune health stations. The participants, including health workers, stakeholders, and patients with NCDs, were selected for the study. The findings reported that the main activities of prevention and control of NCDs at commune health stations (CHSs) still focused on information-education-community (IECs), unqualified for providing screening, diagnosis, and treatments of NCDs. The capacity for prevention and control of NCDs in CHSs was inadequate to provide health care services related to prevention and control of NCDs and unmet with the community’s demands. In order to ensure the role and implementation of primary care level, there is an urgent need to improve the capacity of CHSs for prevention and control of NCDs, particularly a national budget for NCDs prevention and control, the essential equipment and medicines recommended by the World Health Organization should be provided and available at the CHSs.

Background: The incidence of breast cancer has increased consistently in Vietnam over the past two decades. Data from 2012 indicates an increase from an age-standardized rate of 16.2 per 100,000 in 2002, to 23.0 per 100,000 in 2012. Despite this, and consistent studies indicating late diagnosis, there has been a lack of empirical studies on what breast cancer services exist and how they function across different levels of the Vietnamese health system. Aim: Our project sought to examine the accessibility, affordability, and appropriateness of breast cancer services in Vietnam with the objective of making recommendations to strengthen service delivery. Methods: The project used a mixed-methods approach, collecting data through self-administered questionnaires (n=69) and in-depth interviews (n=23) with health professionals working at facilities across all four levels of the Vietnamese health system (national, provincial, district, & commune). We completed in-depth interviews with women (n=12) diagnosed with breast cancer, focusing on their experiences of accessing and using services. Our study was located across three provinces, representing the northern, central, and southern regions of the country. Results: Our results show that screening activities for breast cancer in the community are not systematically organized or provided. There are no stand-alone screening campaigns for breast cancer and facility-based opportunistic screening is limited. There is scope for strengthening the primary and secondary levels of the Vietnamese health system to detect, diagnose and treat breast cancer. Increased autonomy and support for commune-level health stations to conduct screening activities, the systematic incorporation of opportunistic screening, and the extension of breast cancer-specific training for commune and district level health care staff are potential areas for strengthening. Conclusion: Our study suggests that there should be concerted efforts to implement the Ministry of Health's strategic objectives to decentralise and strengthen commune and district levels of the health system in relation to detection, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. No studies have been conducted that pilot interventions to provide systematic and comprehensive breast cancer services at the lower levels of the health system. Specific attention should be given to increasing autonomy and support for commune level health stations to conduct screening activities; for the systematic incorporation of opportunistic screening; and the extension of breast cancer-specific training for commune and district level health care staff.

ObjectivesThe study aims to evaluate the impact of the Revised Health Insurance Law 2014 on the utilisation of outpatient and inpatient care services, healthcare services utilisation at different levels of providers, types of providers and types of visits across different entitlement groups.Design/settingSecondary data from two waves of the Vietnam Household Living Standard Survey (VHLSS) 2016, VHLSS 2014 were used. A cross-sectional study applying propensity score matching was conducted.ParticipantsA total of 4900 individuals who reported using healthcare services are analysed.Outcomes measureNumbers of outpatient and inpatient visits, frequency of healthcare service utilisation at commune health stations, district hospitals, provincial hospitals, public and private health facilities, number of visits at health facility for medical treatment and health checks per year.ResultsThe result indicates that health insurance (HI) policy increased the number of outpatient visits for the enrolled between 0.87 and 1.29. The greatest impact was found on participants of heavily subsidised health insurance (HSHI) programmes with 1.29 visits per person per year. Similarly, an increase between 0.08 and 0.16 in the number of inpatient admissions was because of participation in HI. With regard to type of healthcare providers, the study found that participation in HI has the most effect on the use of healthcare services at district hospitals. However, the study demonstrated that the impacts of HI on the increase in the frequency of visiting commune health stations, number of visits at the provincial hospital for HSHI groups, and number of visits at health facilities for health check and consultation were sensitive to unobserved characteristics.ConclusionOur findings imply that policy-makers in Vietnam could continue expanding health insurance coverage to increase access to healthcare services for citizens, especially vulnerable groups. In addition, the government should draw more attention to primary healthcare level.

A cross-sectional study using DASS21 was performed in June 2019 on staff working at the commune health stations (CHSs), regional general clinics and district general clinics in Soc Son district, Hanoi to assess the mental disorders of the health care workers are working here. Among the 355 health care workers (HCWs) who participated, women accounted for 75.5%. People aged under 30 accounting for 33.5% of HCWs. Physicians, nurses take up 54.4%, and HCWs in the Soc Son district have worked in the health sector for more than ten years, accounting for 45.1%. The study shows that the rates of stress, anxiety, and depression were 13.8%, 25.4% and 16.6%, respectively. 31% of HCWs have at least one mental disorder, 8.2% of study subjects have all three manifestations of mental disorders, 8.4% of study subjects have two symptoms and 14.4% of the study subjects had only one manifestation. The rates of stress, anxiety, and depression were initially screened from the research results. The development of research directions for defnitive diagnosis and support for improving health care workers’ mental health should be integrated.

Introduction: Healthcare workers (HCWs) are at the frontline of COVID-19 control and prevention but also are high-risk groups for COVID-19 infection. The low level of knowledge and negative attitudes toward COVID-19 among HCWs can lead to inappropriate responding, wrong diagnoses, and poor practices for prevention. This research aims to examine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding COVID-19 prevention and factors influencing the practices among HCWs in Daklak province, Vietnam. Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 963 HCWs working at district health centers and commune health stations through an online survey. Results: Overall, HCWs have good knowledge (91.3%), a positive attitude (71.5%), and appropriate practice (83.1%) regarding COVID-19 prevention. There was 89.6% of HCWs facing difficulties in practicing preventive measures such as felt difficult to change their habits (56.4%), insufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) (40.0%), and inconvenience to practice preventive measures (14.4%). The factors associated with implementing good practices are age group, residence, and knowledge about COVID-19. Recommendation: The Daklak Department of Health should provide additional training programs and guidelines about COVID-19 prevention and PPE for HCWs. More studies on risk and protective factors, and assessment about KAP regarding COVID-19 prevention at the post of the pandemic are needed.

Background: Hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) is a public health problem in Viet Nam, and studies have reported seasonal fluctuation in the occurrence of HFMD. This study sought to describe the occurrence of HFMD and its associated meteorological factors in Dak Lak province, Viet Nam. Methods: Monthly data on HFMD cases were collected from all commune health stations in Dak Lak province from 2012 through 2013. An HFMD case was defined as a brief febrile illness accompanied by a typical skin rash with or without mouth ulcers. Average temperature, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, humidity, rainfall, evaporation, sunshine duration and wind speed were recorded monthly at five local meteorological stations throughout Dak Lak. Data were aggregated at the district level, and the association between these meteorological factors and HFMD cases were examined by Poisson regression. Results: In 2012 through 2013, there were 7128 HFMD patients in Dak Lak. The number of HFMD cases increased during the rainy season. An increased risk of HFMD was associated with higher average temperature (risk ratio and 95% confidence interval: 1.06; 1.03–1.08 per 1 °C increase), higher rainfall (1.19; 1.14–1.24 per 200 mm increase) and longer sunshine duration (1.14; 1.07–1.22 per 60 hours increase). The risk of HFMD was inversely associated with wind speed (0.77; 0.73–0.81 per 1 m/s increase). Conclusion: This study suggests that there is a significant association between HFMD occurrence and climate. Temperature, rainfall, wind speed and sunshine duration could be used as meteorological predictors of HFMD occurrence in Viet Nam’s Central Highlands region. Intensified surveillance for HFMD during the rainy season is recommended.

Background: Liver cancer has been leading cancer mortality nationwide in Viet Nam. Aim: The aim was to examine time trends of liver cancer mortality by performing population-based mortality registration in Nghe An province, 2005-2014. Methods: We yearly collected data from all 480 Commune Health Stations from 2005 to 2014 using the designed form of “Mortality Registration” with a guideline of underlying-, immediate, - and contribute cause of death. Five variables were included name, age, sex, date of death and cause of death. Average residents of each commune were also yearly reported. All cases were coded ICD-10, then liver cancer (C22) was derived. Age-standardized rate (ASR) was estimated. Trend of liver cancer was observed by estimated mortality rates ratio and 95% confident interval (MRR) for 5-period of 2005-2006 (reference), 2007-2008, 2009-2010, 2011-2012, 2013-2014, adjusted for total mortality rate and proportion of cases with unknown causes of death, for total, subgroup of ages 40 or older, and ages less than 40. Results: Among registered 7,667 cases of liver cancer, there were 855 cases aged less than 40. Mortality rates per 100,000 (ASR) were increased from 37.4 to 52.8 in men and 9.2 to 12.6 in women, from 2005 to 2014, respectively. The increased trends were significantly seen for the subpopulation ages 40 or older only, MRR=1.56, 95% CI: 1.38-1.76 in men and MRR=1.67, 95% CI: 1.36-2.04 in women, all P trend < 0.05. In contrast, the decreased trends were significantly observed for the subpopulation ages less than 40, MRR=0.72, 95% CI: 0.54-0.97 in men and MRR=0.47, 95% CI: 0.22-0.99 in women, all P trend < 0.05. Conclusion: The significant decline risks of death from liver cancer for the subpopulation ages less than 40 during 2005-2014 might be explained by HBV vaccine nationwide from 1998 to date and reduction of environmental factors induced this cancer sites in improving healthy environments after the war ended in 1975. Key-words: Liver-cancer, population-based mortality registration, Viet Nam, HBV-vaccine.

Abstract In Vietnam, the overall prevalence of hypertension (HTN) was 21%, with lower estimates for the prevalence of HTN awareness and treatment. The health systems, like other low- and middle-income countries, were designed to provide acute care for episodic conditions, rather than a chronic condition where patients need long-term care across time and disciplines. This article describes the delivery and organization of HTN care at primary healthcare (PHC) settings in both urban and rural areas at Hue Province of Central Vietnam in comparison with Thai Nguyen province in Northern Vietnam based on the infrastructure capacity and patients’ and providers’ perspectives and experiences We used mixed-methods design that included in-depth semi-structured interviews with patients and healthcare providers at purposively selected PHC facilities in two districts of each province and a modified version of the service availability and readiness assessment inventory at all PHC facilities. We found that HTN patients in both provinces can access healthcare services to diagnose, treat and control their HTN condition at the PHC level with a focus on district facilities. Health services in Hue have allowed commune health stations (CHSs) to provide routine monitoring and prescription refills for HTN patients while maintaining periodical visits to a higher level of care to monitor the stability of the disease. Such provision of care at CHSs remained restricted in Thai Nguyen. Further improvements are necessary for referral procedures, information system to allow for longitudinal follow-up across levels of care and defining a basic health insurance or benefits package, which meets patients’ preferences with a monthly timespan for prescription refills.

Background: Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the leading causes of morbidity and mortality among adults in Vietnam. Little is known about the magnitude of socioeconomic inequalities in NCDs and other NCD-related factors in urban areas, in particular among the poor living in slum areas. Understanding these disparities are essential in contributing to the knowledge, needed to reduce inequalities and close the related health gaps burdening the disadvantaged populations in urban areas.  Objective: To examine the burden and health system responsiveness to NCDs in Hanoi, Vietnam and investigate the role of socioeconomic inequalities in their prevalence, subsequent healthcare utilization and related impoverishment due to health expenditures.  Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 3,736 individuals aged 15 years and over who lived in 1211 randomly selected households in 2013 in urban Hanoi, Vietnam. The study collected information on household’s characteristics, household expenditures, and household member information. A qualitative approach was implemented to explore the responsiveness of commune health stations to the increasing burden of NCDs in urban Hanoi. In-depth interview approach was conducted among health staff involved in NCD tasks at four commune health stations in urban Hanoi. Furthermore, NCD managers at relevance district, provincial and national levels were interviewed.  Results: The prevalence of self-reported NCDs was significantly higher among individuals in non-slum areas (11.6%) than those in slum areas (7.9%). However, the prevalence of self-reported NCDs concentrated among the poor in both slum and non-slum areas. In slum areas, the poor needed more health care services, but the rich consumed more health care services. Among households with at least one household member reporting diagnosis of NCDs, the proportion of household facing catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment were the greater in slum areas than in non-slum areas. Poor households in slum areas were more likely to face catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment. The poor in non-slum areas were also more likely to face impoverishment if their household members experienced NCDs. Health system responses to NCDs at commune health stations in urban Hanoi were weak, characterized by the lack of health information, inadequate human resources, poor financing, inadequate quality and quantity of services, lack of essential medicines. The commune health stations were not prepared to respond to the rising prevalence of NCDs in urban Hanoi.  Conclusion: This thesis shows the existence of socioeconomic inequalities in the prevalence of self-reported NCDs in both non-slum and slum areas in urban Hanoi. NCDs associated with the inequalities in health care utilization, catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment, particular in slum areas. Appropriate interventions should focus more on specific population groups to reduce the socioeconomic inequalities in the NCD prevalence and health care utilization related to NCDs to prevent catastrophic health expenditure and impoverishment among the households of NCD patients.  The functions of commune health stations in the urban setting should be strengthened through the development of NCDs service packages covered by the health insurance.

Premature vascular disease is common in Type 1 diabetes, especially in women and those with long duration. Many studies have identified early vascular involvement, using carotid Doppler and coronary artery calcification. Symptoms of coronary heart disease are often absent or muted, and the best methods for identifying occult coronary heart disease in Type 1 patients are not known. The concept of ideal cardiovascular health is valuable in planning preventive lifestyle and medical interventions. ‘Essential’ hypertension in young Type 1 patients is common, and reflects increased arterial stiffness. Hypertension is invariable in patients with any degree of albuminuria or renal impairment. Statin treatment in patients over 40 years old is recommended, but the evidence base is weak. Statins and ezetimibe are the only agents of prognostic value currently available for prevention of vascular events. Primary prevention with aspirin needs individual assessment. Insulin resistance/metabolic syndrome is frequent in Type 1 diabetes.

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.

Student health care practitioners are often apprehensive about simulated examinations as they have never undertaken an examination like this before and often do not know what to expect. The purpose of the chapter is to explore the OSCE process and help you to understand and plan for your own OSCE. OSCE examinations may be organized very differently depending upon the subject of the examination and your own university’s preference. Most simulated examinations are held in clinical skills rooms or simulation suites at the student’s university campus. Very occasionally they may be held off site at another location, e.g. a hospital teaching room. The examination structure may vary dramatically (Bloomfield et al. 2010) and may be: ● Multiple short stations, ● Complex single stations, ● Unmanned station. These are also known as ‘short case’ OSCE stations. A typical short station OSCE will involve the student health care practitioner ‘rotating’ around a number of different stations. It is likely that within each examination room several skills will be assessed at any one time and part of the assessment will involve moving from station to station to ensure that students complete all skills/knowledge assessments that are required. This format allows examiners to assess a range of skills during one simulated examination period (Ahuja 2009). The number of stations will depend upon the university’s examination structure but it may be that there are up to five stations to attend. Some universities ask students to rotate around more than this (in some occasions up to 20). This type of OSCE is very common in pre-registration nursing OSCEs (Bloomfield et al. 2010). Simulated examinations may be held in one room or students may be required to move from room to room to ensure all skills are assessed. This type of OSCE is usually used to examine the more complex skills and may be used in the final year to test more complicated skills such as assessment of the sick patient. You should be aware that you may also be asked to undertake OSCE in your post-registration nurse education.

Communication is not just giving information; rather, it is a two-way process and involves the exchange of information, ideas, and knowledge. Eff ective communication is the key to success and can be achieved only if the receiver understands the exact information the sender is aiming to transfer. Medical communication is the art of speaking clearly and professionally, while reducing the possibility of being misunderstood. It will increase patient satisfaction and trust and improve understanding of treatment and compliance. Examiners consider effective communication to be the most essential skill any doctor requires to deal with the patient’s problems. The General Medical Council has highlighted the importance of communicating well by stating that ‘medical graduates must be able to communicate clearly, sensitively and effectively, not only with patients and their relatives, but also with colleagues and other healthcare professionals’. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Heath has put so much emphasis on communication that this is the only skill that is tested in two independent stations in the clinical examination. The College feels that a careful assessment of communication skills distinguishes the good candidates from the bad ones. Often, overseas-trained candidates and non-native English speakers find this station difficult, as they may not have grasped the basic skills of this assessment. In this station, the examiner will watch a communication scenario between the candidate and the patient’s family. It is of utmost importance to read the instructions carefully and understand them. A common mistake is to confuse this station with history taking. The examiner’s task is to observe only and not to ask any questions or make any comments on the candidate's performance. At the end of the episode, the examiner will evaluate the candidate’s performance. The key competence skills required in the communication station are given in table 2.1. Effective communication is a two-way process in which there is an exchange of thoughts, feelings, or ideas towards a mutually accepted goal. Speaking and listening are the two arms of effective communication. One cannot be an effective communicator if both speaking and listening are not mastered. Medical communication starts with speaking, which requires a sender, a message, a medium or channel, and a receiver. The sender encodes a package of information and transmits this by a medium to the receiver. Commonly used media include air, noise, signal, and paper. Content and context are the two elements of information that will be transmitted via the medium. Content is the actual words or symbols. Context is the way the message is delivered, that is the non-verbal components such as body language, facial expressions, posture, gestures, eye contact, and state of emotion. During communication, context is extremely important as it helps the patient and the doctor to understand one another. On receiving the message, the recipient decodes it and can give the sender feedback (figure 2.1).

This chapter acts as both a review and an empirical framework analysis piece. It argues that technological acceptance and adoption by healthcare firms still suffers from oversimplification of its development, and specially, it measurement processes. There is a common thought both in business and academia that the technology adoption process is a key component of success and allows firms to achieve and sustain competitive advantages. In a digital era, these advantages arise from the potential of information and communication technology to improve firms’ daily activities. This research tries to reinforce the assessment of ICT impacts on healthcare firm performance, presenting a set of induced and intangible benefits besides the traditional financial benefits, as well as measuring IS integration impact. To do so, a structural equation model is applied to a large database sample covering firms from 17 European countries. The results reinforce the importance of induced and structural benefits in firms’ overall performance. It also found a positive relationship between IS integrated systems and performance. These results can be a starting point for a rethinking of the measurement models used in healthcare firms, and reinforce the argument stating that an IS integrated approach can provide better outcomes. Nevertheless, some questions remain unanswered regarding the impacts of ICT acceptance process on overall benefits, and therefore, future research will focus on this domain.

The story of statins starts with cholesterol because statins are a class of drugs that reduce low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, the “bad” cholesterol. LDL cholesterol, in turn, is a major risk factor for coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death worldwide and projected to remain so through 2025. About 1.5 million Americans suffer heart attacks each year, and heart disease has emerged as the biggest cause of death in the United States, killing 911,000 people in 2003. Before the 1940s, the average lifespan in America was 47 years, and heart disease did not contribute to mortality to a large extent because people often died of infections. Currently, an average American lives to celebrate her 77th birthday. As a consequence, heart-related disease has risen to be the number one killer. Coronary heart disease manifests in many forms: angina, arrhythmia, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure, hypertension, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction (heart attack), and sudden cardiac death. Atherosclerosis, or blockage in arteries, results when a buildup of cholesterol, inflammatory cells, and fibrous tissue called plaques forms on an artery wall. If these plaques rupture, they can block blood flow to critical organs such as the heart or brain and can lead to heart attack or stroke. Despite the many different forms of cardiovascular disease, the molecule cholesterol is a common denominator for most of them. Therefore, in order to understand coronary heart disease, we first need to take a look at the cholesterol molecule. According to Roman mythology, Janus is the guardian of portals and patron of beginnings and endings. Just like the two-faced Roman god, cholesterol is a double-edged sword for the human body. On the one hand, it is an essential building block for many crucial ingredients the body needs. On the other hand, it can be lethal when it forms plaques on the surface of the arteries and subsequently causes coronary heart disease. Make no mistake, cholesterol is vital to our existence. It is most abundant in our brains—23% of total body cholesterol resides there, making up 1/10th of the solid substance of the brain.

This chapter analyses the mid-nineteenth century attempts to improve the working conditions of merchant seamen in Britain, by focussing on the actions of the Society for Improving the Condition of Merchant Seamen - an extra-parliamentary committee founded to push for governmental reform. Williams notes that the committee was comprised of MPs, naval officers, medical men, and shipmasters, but no common seamen whatsoever. He suggests the society grew out of primarily middle-class humanitarian interests. The society published reports into health, accommodation, wages, and protection of life. Williams declares that their audience was the general public, those who value business freedom but are troubled by humanitarian concerns. He concludes by stating the Society was both instrumental and symptomatic in the shift in consciousness from improving maritime discipline, to improving maritime welfare.

The objective of atmospheric humidity measurements is to determine the amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere by weight, by volume, by partial pressure, or by a fraction (percentage) of the saturation (equilibrium) vapor pressure with respect to a plane surface of pure water. The measurement of atmospheric humidity in the field has been and continues to be troublesome. It is especially difficult for automatic weather stations where low cost, low power consumption, and reliability are common constraints. Pure water vapor in equilibrium with a plane surface of pure water exerts a pressure designated e's. This pressure is a function of the temperature of the vapor and liquid phases and can be obtained by integration of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation, assuming linear dependence of the latent heat of vaporization on temperature, L = L0(1+∝ (T-T0)], where T0 = 273.15K, L0 = 2.5008 x 106Jkg-1, the latent heat of water vapor at T0, Rv = 461.51Jkg-1K-1, the gas constant for water vapor, e's0 = 611.21 Pa, the equilibrium water vapor pressure at T = T0, and ∝ = - 9.477 x 10-4 K-1 = average rate of change coefficient for the latent heat of water vapor with respect to temperature. Since water vapor is not a perfect gas, the above equation is not an exact fit. The vapor pressure as a function of temperature has been determined by numerous experiments.

The MRCP PACES respiratory station offers an opportunity to demonstrate a slick examination technique that is performed on practically all patients. Respiratory diseases, after cardiovascular and musculoskeletal complaints, are the third most common cause for presentation to either the Emergency Department or the general practitioner (GP) and remains proof of the concept that ‘common things are common’. Respiratory disease can be generally divided into 3 major categories: airways, parenchymal and pleural disease. We have aimed to structure the following chapter to reflect this. Certain ‘high-yield’ or ‘favourites’ that recur in the PACES examination are covered in this section. During PACES, examiners assess your ability to both elicit and then correctly interpret physical signs. A general sense exists that a decision to pass or fail a candidate rests on an aura of competence (or incompetence!) during the clinical performance. In essence, the examiners are looking for you to demonstrate correct techniques whilst eliciting the signs and logical thinking when interpreting them. Therefore, eliciting the physical signs is only the first step; the interpretation and presentation are equally, if not more, important. With this in mind, the following useful general points should be considered: • The respiratory examination does not need to be a lengthy one. Start at the peripheries with the hands and then move to the back (unless specifically advised otherwise by your examiners). Traditionally the physical examination starts with the anterior chest but it is perfectly acceptable to do the back first then return to the front (most signs and clues to the diagnosis e.g. scars, will be detected by examining the posterior chest). • A 6-minute period is allowed for the examination portion of the station and it is our advice to spend the first 2 minutes examining the patient from a general perspective (including full inspection, hands and face) then the second 2 minutes on the posterior chest and the final 2 minutes on the anterior chest. As time is limited, palpate for features of pulmonary hypertension or right-sided heart failure at the anterior chest, before moving to the respiratory signs.

In 1976, a terrible dictatorship was established in Argentina, even before Foucault claimed with crystal clarity that the fundamental difference between classical liberalism and neoliberalism was the substitution of the homo economicus −related to the exchange− by the homo economicus as entrepreneur of himself (lecture delivered on 14 March 1979); and also before Margaret Thatcher (in Ronald Butt’s interview, Sunday Times, 3 May 1981) confirmed Foucault´s analysis stating that: “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul”. In the same year, Milton Friedman received the Nobel Prize in Economics. The explicit purpose of the Military Junta was to promote a profound cultural transformation, based on the premise that the causes of the alleged “underdevelopment” were not so much economical but cultural and political. Nevertheless, as García Delgado and Molina (2006) pointed out, the problem is not related to a sort of inevitable structural poverty, due to the culture of our people. It is a matter of a decline in society, produced by the policy orientation of the dictatorship. Until then, the income distribution was similar to that of the countries from the Southern Europe with an almost frictional unemployment. Until the coup d’état, Argentina had a poverty rate of 8% and the best distributive structure of income in Latin America. However, 1976 was a turning point; the surge of the neoliberal model promoted a process of over-indebtedness, wealth concentration, unrestricted opening of markets with an unfavourable exchange rate for national industry, labour flexibilization, with the insertion in a competitive globalization of “savage capitalism” that “strengthened the asymmetries and transfers of resources from the periphery to the centre. This concept differs from thinking about inequality as a problem related to culture, corruption and poor institutional quality” (García Delgado, 2006).Despite the overwhelming adverse evidence, it is still a commonplace to blame all the ills of our society on that culture, the maximum expression of which would be Peronism. In fact, the great majority of disappeared people during the dictatorship were Peronist political, trade union and social leaders. The motto of the Ministry of Economics during the dictatorship was “towards a change of mentality”. The current Argentine situation, in terms of advances of neoliberalism as well as resistances to it, cannot be understood without referring to the dictatorship. In Poratti words, “the coup d’état of 1976 does not only put an end to a government, a political system and project, but also to a 'world' in which Argentinians were living at least from the independence project of 1810. In those days, there was not an abrupt differentiation between generations and, in many aspects, people could identify themselves, diachronically, with a historical line beyond the particular generational characteristics” (Various Authors, 2009).These aspects go along with others that appeared in other areas, such as the implementation of new computer and communication technologies and, as a consequence, individual and social fragmentation. The impact of these technologies on daily life was decisive to the emergence of what some authors, like Sloterdijk (2002), called “mass individualism.” No doubt, this is a necessary aspect to explain the rise of the neoliberal subjectivity in developed countries. Yet, in Argentina, the existence of political, social, trade-union and ecclesiastical movements based on popular roots, with solidarity as a fundamental value, hampered the conquest of the “heart and soul” in 1976; and they are still now an obstacle to be overcome by sectors interested in imposing a neoliberal model. It is impossible to explain any isolated phenomenon of popular resistance to the hegemonic attempts from neoliberalism without analysing the common conceptions and understandings found in Argentina. Indeed, the popular culture substrate in Argentina is made up, mainly, by the confluence of different cultures: Andean, Guaraní Indians, Afro and Criollo (native). All of them are characterized by their relational and solidarity conceptions, intrinsically opposed to a subjectivity that conceives the individual as an entrepreneur of himself/herself.

Central-station power plants (CSPP) are the main provider of energy today. In the process of power generation at central-power stations, about 67% of primary energy is wasted. Distributed cogeneration or combined heat and power (CHP) systems are an alternative to central-station power plants. In these systems, an electrical generation system located in a residence or at a commercial site consumes natural gas to generate electricity locally and then the exhaust heat is utilized for local heating needs (in contrast to being wasted at central-stations). Microturbines offer a number of potential advantages compared to other technologies for small-scale power generation. For example, compact size and low-weight leading to reduced civil engineering costs, a small number of moving parts, lower noise and vibration, multi-fuel capabilities, low maintenance cost as well as opportunities for lower emissions. Inverter generators allow using micro-turbines of different shaft rotation speed that opens opportunities to unit optimization at off-design modes. The common approach to predict the off-design performance of gas turbine unit is the mapping of the compressor and the turbine separately and the consequent matching of common operation points. However, the above-mentioned approach might be rather inaccurate if the unit has some secondary flows. In this article an alternative approach for predicting off-design performance without using component maps is presented. Here the off-design performance is done by direct calculation of the components performances. On each off-design mode, the recalculation of the characteristic of all scheme components, including a compressor, gas turbine, combustor, recuperator and secondary flow system is performed. The different approaches for obtaining the performance at off-design modes considering the peculiarities of the gas turbine engine are presented in this paper.

Gas compressor stations represent a huge potential for exhaust heat recovery. Typical installations consist of open cycle configurations with multiple gas turbine units, usually operated under part-load conditions during the year with limited conversion efficiency. At least, one of the installed unit serves as back-up to ensure the necessary reserve power and the safe operation of the station. Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) has been proven as an economical and environmentally friendly solution to recover waste heat from gas turbines, improving the overall energy system performance and reducing the CO2 emissions. In this context, taking as reference typical gas compressor stations located in North America, the paper investigates the potential benefit of ORC application, as bottomer section of gas turbines, in natural gas compression facilities. Thus, ORC converts gas turbines wasted heat into useful additional power that can be used inside the compression facility reducing the amount of consumed natural gas and, consequently, the environmental emissions, or directed to the grid, thus furthermore earning economic benefits. Different case studies are examined with reference to two typical compressor station size ranges: a “small-medium” and a “medium-high” size range. Two different gas turbine models are considered according to most common manufacturers. Typical gas compressor stations and integrated cycle configurations are identified. Based on Turboden experience in development and production of ORCs, specific design options and constraints, layout arrangements and operating parameters are examined and compared in this study, such as the use of an intermediate heat transfer fluid, the type of organic fluid, the influence of superheating degree and condensation temperature values. Emphasis is given on thermodynamic performance of the integrated system by evaluating thermal energy and mechanical power recovery. Several key performance indexes are defined such as, the ORC power and efficiency, the specific power recovery per unit of compression power, the integrated system net overall power output and efficiency, the ORC expander and heat exchangers size parameters, the carbon emission savings, etc. The performed comparison of various configurations shows that: (i) the energy recovery with ORC can be remarkable, adding up to more than 35% of additional shaft power to the compression station in the best configuration; (ii) the ORC condensation temperature value has a significant impact on the ORC bottomer cycle and on the integrated system performance; (iii) in case of Cyclopentane, keeping the same ORC cycle operating parameters, the max specific power recovery is achieved in the direct configuration case, (iv) the bottomer cycle size can be reduced with the use of a refrigerant fluid (R1233zd(E)), compared to hydrocarbon fluids; (v) the max environmental benefit can be up to 120 kg CO2/h saved per MW of installed compression power.

This paper presents the implementation of an integrated solar combined cycle (ISCC) on the existing 44 MW Cameo Power Generating Station, located in Palisade, Colorado. The plant was originally built in 1957 as a coal fired power plant, to serve the Grand Junction community. This plant has been chosen to demonstrate the viability of the ISCC because of its time line to decommissioning and the availability of additional power from nearby stations to fulfill the community’s needs. The solar system at Cameo utilizes 8 aluminum parabolic trough collectors arranged in 4 loops. Each of these collectors is approximately 150 meters long and 5.77 meters wide. The hot heat transfer fluid used in the solar field is sent to a solar feed water heater, located in between two of the existing feed water heaters, to supplement the thermal energy required by the steam cycle. At design conditions, the solar field will provide 4 MW of thermal energy to the power plant. The development of this ISCC has faced several design and construction challenges not common in traditional power plant and solar power plant design. When first constructed, the Cameo station had no provisions made regarding solar field location, heat transfer fluid piping runs, heat transfer fluid pumping station, thermal expansion vessels, the addition of solar thermal energy to the feed water system, and the integration of a solar field control system into the existing plant distributed control system. Also unaccounted for are the affects the integration of a solar feed water heater has on the thermodynamic efficiency of the steam cycle. This paper discusses these challenges, as well as their resolution, as seen during the engineering, procurement, construction, and commissioning phases of this project. The Cameo Power Generating Station is located in the DeBeque Canyon, 4 miles east of Palisade, Colorado along the Colorado River and Interstate 70. The solar feed water heating demonstration will be in operation for 1 to 2 years, at the discretion of Xcel Energy, to test and develop operating and maintenance methods for large scale application. After such time, both the plant and the solar field will be decommissioned. After decommissioning all applicable solar field equipment shall be refurbished and utilized at additional testing facilities.

The use of Remaining Useful Life (RUL) predictions as a decision support tool has increased in recent years. The RUL predictions can be obtained from Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) systems that monitor the health status and estimate the failure instant of components and systems. An example of a decision-making problem that can benet from RUL predictions is the load distribution problem, which is a common problem that appears in many industrial applications. It consists in dening how to distribute a task among a set of components. In this paper, a model to solve load distribution optimization problems is proposed. The proposed model considers the RUL prediction of each component in its formulation. Also, the proposed model assumes that the predicted RUL of each component is a function of the load assigned to that component. Thus, it is possible to distribute the load to avoid multiplecomponents to fail in a short interval. An approach based on the MMKP (Multiple-choice Multidimensional Knapsack Problem) is adopted. The proposed model nds a load distribution that minimizes the operational cost subject to a maintenance personnel capacity constraint, i.e. there is a maximum number of components that can be simultaneously on repair. A numerical case study considering a gas compressor station is presented to illustrate the application of theproposed model.

In the last decade, massive implementation of detection devices that use the Internet of Things (IoT) has penetrated considerably in all areas, and the agricultural field is no exception. The article aims to provide an integrated vineyard management solution based on the Internet of Things technology in the Smart Viticulture domain. The monitored parameters for Smart Agriculture are the air temperature and humidity and soil and air humidity, which have a direct impact on grapes. The study region is at the viticulture station and the study period was from June to September in two the year 2019-2020. Vineyard perimeter includes the plantations located both on the right bank of the river Târnava Mare and on the river Târnava Mică, in a hilly area with kneaded relief, but very favorable for the culture of vines. The most common diseases of the vineyards are powdery mildew, downy mildew, and bunch rot. Moreover, the monitoring system aims to manage agricultural issues related to irrigations and analyze the measured parameters' effect, helping the farmers have healthy vineyards. Also, the paper addresses the need to achieve climate-adapted and more resilient farming, promoting better management tools based on objective data-driven decisions.

Forest fires are of common occurrence all over the world, causing severe damages to valuable natural environment and loss of human lives. In order to reduce the damages by forest fires, it is useful to utilize a system, which can predict the occurrence of forest fires and the spread of fires. Well known is a system in USA, called NFDRS to predict forest fire occurrence and FARSITE to predict fire growth, based on the fire weather information taken from a network, combined with forest fuel conditions and land topography data, and processed by an algorithm to generate the various fire danger indices. In Japan the number of forest fires is roughly 3,000 per year, which is 1/30 times compared with USA, and there are very few fires exceeding 1000 ha burnt area, hence there has existed scant demand for this type of intelligent system. Although recently there is an increasing demand for such a system in Japan, the US system for forest-fire prediction is however not applicable to Japan, since the forest topology and weather conditions between Japan and USA are far different. Moreover, many fire weather stations have been installed in the US forests, but in Japan no such fire weather stations are installed in forests. Thus, as a first step to develop an intelligent system for Japan, we have analyzed the fundamentals of forest fire danger rating and the fire spread, based on the weather data and other information on forest fires. The objective of this study is to examine how the fundamentals, based on analyzing the past fire occurrences and CFD simulations particularly on “Katunuma Fire”, can predict the occurrence of forest fires and the spread of forest fires.

Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) utilizes solar thermal energy to drive a thermal power cycle for the generation of electricity. CSP technologies include parabolic trough, linear Fresnel, central receiver or “power tower,” and dish/engine systems. The parabolic trough is the most common system with nine Solar Electric Generating Stations (SEGS) operating in southern California for over two decades and new plants online in Nevada and Spain. The resurgent interest in CSP has been driven by renewable portfolio standards in southwestern states and renewable energy feed-in tariffs in Spain. CSP has cost advantages versus solar photovoltaic systems for large, centralized power plants. Certain CSP systems, in particular parabolic troughs and power towers, are also amenable to the incorporation of thermal energy storage. Thermal energy storage is much less expensive than electric storage and allows CSP plants to increase capacity factor and dispatch power as needed — for example, to cover an evening demand peak.

Abstract In order to study the optimization modes of smoke control in the case of fire in metro transfer channel, a full-scale numerical station model with a single transfer channel is established. In case of fire, the influencing of ceiling beam, vent size on smoke control effect are analyzed. The ceiling temperature profile, CO concentration, visibility and smoke layer height under different conditions were studied to evaluate the smoke control effect of transfer channel and station hall. Based on this, the optimization suggestions of ventilation and smoke exhaust system design and smoke control modes for transfer channel are put forward. The results show that, the ceiling beams can effectively delay the speed of smoke diffusion and gain time for personnel escape and emergency rescue. The vent size has a great influence on the ventilation and smoke exhaust effect under the condition of meeting the designed ventilation capacity. Among the three common vent sizes listed in this research, the smaller the size is, the better the smoke control effect is. The length and width of vent with best smoke control effect are 1.2 m and 0.8m respectively.

Static and dynamic analysis of a circular cylindrical shell that models a segment of human aorta is carried out in this study. The shell is assumed to have three hyperelastic layers with residual stresses. Material data and residual stresses are taken from the literature from human toracic descending aorta. The material model is the Holzapfel-Gasser-Ogden (HGO). Dissipation is modelled by viscoelasticity. The dynamic load is given by a pulsating pressure reproducing the physiological pressure during the heart beating. The inertial effect of the contained blood fluid is taken into account. Under the static pressure, the initially soft shell becomes much stiffer, which is a common feature of soft biological tissues. The nonlinear dynamics is not particularly complicated, due to the significant damping.

Accurate charge-control and state-of-charge monitoring of lead-acid batteries is an ever-increasing necessity in an industry that demands low-maintenance costs and highly available systems. If the batteries are charged by photovoltaic panels and are installed in remote sites (e.g. Oil sea-platforms, highway emergency bays, autonomous communications systems) and exposed to aggressive environmental conditions (e.g. Extreme temperature, high humidity), the problem of extending the batteries’ useful life becomes a challenge. Most charging algorithms do not perform well when photovoltaic panels are the sole source of energy because energy availability is not guaranteed. A charge algorithm that maximizes the use of energy generated by the panel during daylight hours is needed. This paper presents a microcontroller-based charge-controller suitable for photovoltaic applications. The controller performs temperature compensation on the charge algorithm. It also stores those parameters that provide an indication on batteries’ state-of-charge and state-of-health: Panel voltage, battery’s voltage and current, current demanded by a load and room temperature. The controller has serial communication capabilities that make possible the connection to a personal computer or central station. By using a local industrial network or radio links, multiple controllers can be monitored by a central station running a battery management program. The information collected by all the controllers in the system is analyzed to determine the state-of-charge of individual batteries and, if required, command the appropriate controller to perform special procedures like, for example, thorough diagnostics or equalization. Preliminary field-test results of a controller installed in a high-way emergency bay are presented in this paper. It is shown that protection against deep discharges is achieved, which contributes to extend the battery useful life.