Sensitivity Analysis - Science topic

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Chronic exposure to fine particulate matter may cause adverse health impacts on humans. The impact of fine particulate matter collected in the industrial area was explored. Therefore, this study aimed 1) to assess the levels and spatial distribution of fine particulate matter and 2) to estimate the health risks due to the...

Many companies face challenges in reducing their supply chain costs while increasing sustainability and customer service levels. A comprehensive framework for a sustainable closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) network is a practical solution to these challenges. Hence, for the first time, this study considers an integrated multi-objective mixed-integer...

Background Weight misperception adversely affects health-related quality of life (HRQol); however, few studies have evaluated the relationship between weight misperception and muscle mass. This study aimed to examine the relationship of weight misperception with low muscle mass using skeletal muscle index (SMI) estimated by multifrequency bioelectr...

Historic arch bridges have good gravitational load-bearing capacity. But they are usually vulnerable to seismic loads. Seismic vulnerability analysis and structural behavior assessment of this building requires information on the materials used in the bridge. Due to the limitation of destructive and semi-destructive tests on this constructions and...

Background Atrial fibrillation is the most common arrhythmia disease. Animal and observational studies have found a link between iron status and atrial fibrillation. However, the causal relationship between iron status and AF remains unclear. The purpose of this investigation was to use Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis, which has been widely a...

Objective Life expectancy can be estimated accurately from a cohort of individuals born in the same year and followed from birth to death. However, due to the resource-consuming nature of following a cohort prospectively, life expectancy is often assessed based upon retrospective death record reviews. This conventional approach may lead to potentia...

Lassa fever is an infectious and zoonotic disease with incidence ranging between a hundred to three hundred thousand cases, with approximately five thousand deaths reported yearly in West Africa. This disease has become endemic in the Lassa belt of Sub-Saharan Africa, thus increasing the health burden in these regions including Nigeria. A determini...

The increasing penetration of renewable energy sources (RES) into modern power systems may reflect the problem of frequency stabilization. Therefore, this paper proposes a new combined Fuzzy Fractional-Order Proportional-Integral (FOPI) and Tilt-Integral-Derivative (TID) controller to improve the frequency response of a hybrid power system. The pro...

Coupling genetic and mechanistic models is appealing to explore the impact of energy trade-offs on the expression of feed efficiency traits in dairy cattle and predict selection response. The objective of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity of genetic (co)variances among milk production and feed efficiency (FE) traits simulated with a mechan...

Worldwide, most treatment systems are retuning sidestreams to the wastewater treatment plant head without treatment. This study established an innovative process to separately treat all sidestream lines (supernatant gravity thickener, underflow mechanical thickener, and centrate) away from plant mainstream and return treated sidestream effluents to...

In this study, MWCNT-Al 2 O 3 hybrid nanoparticles with a composition ratio of 50:50 in SAE50 base oil are used. This paper aims to describe the rheological behavior of hybrid nanofluid based on temperature, shear rate ( $$\dot{\gamma })$$ γ ˙ ) and volume fraction of nanoparticles ( $$\varphi$$ φ ) to present an experimental correlation model. Flo...

Dunaliella salina is a green microalga with the great potential to generate natural β-carotene. However, the corresponding mathematical models to guide optimized production of β-carotene in Dunaliella salina ( D. salina ) are not yet available. In this study, dynamic models were proposed to simulate effects of environmental factors on cell growth a...

User-generated contents often contain private information, even when they are shared publicly on social media and on the web in general. Although many filtering and natural language approaches for automatically detecting obscenities or hate speech have been proposed, determining whether a shared post contains sensitive information is still an open...

Rapid global COVID-19 pandemic response by mass vaccination is currently limited by the rate of vaccine manufacturing. This study presents a techno-economic feasibility assessment and comparison of three vaccine production platform technologies deployed during the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) adenovirus-vectored (AVV) vaccines, (2) messenger RNA (mRNA) v...

Background Olanzapine has been shown to have an additive effect on the three-drug antiemetic therapy consisting of aprepitant, palonosetron, and dexamethasone, in a highly emetogenic cisplatin-containing chemotherapy. Although olanzapine may be more economical than aprepitant or palonosetron, an adequate cost-efficacy analysis has not been conducte...

Background Little is known about the impact of hospital trajectory on survival and functional decline of older critically ill patients. We evaluate 6-month outcomes after admission to: intensive care units (ICU), intermediate care units (IMCU) or acute medical wards (AMW). Methods Data from the randomised prospective multicentre clinical trial ICE...

Background The duration of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA positivity will be important to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). A systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted following PRISMA to determine the duration from several parts of the body and clinical characteristics affecting i...

Background Musculoskeletal modeling is currently a preferred method for estimating the muscle forces that underlie observed movements. However, these estimates are sensitive to a variety of assumptions and uncertainties, which creates difficulty when trying to interpret the muscle forces from musculoskeletal simulations. Here, we describe an approa...

Objective Person-to-person transmission can occur during outbreaks of verotoxigenic Escherichia coli (VTEC), however the impact of this transmission route is not well understood. This study aimed to examine the role of person-to-person transmission during a VTEC outbreak, and how targeting this route may reduce outbreak size. A deterministic compar...

Background The ability of end-tidal carbon dioxide (ΔEtCO2) for predicting fluid responsiveness has been extensively studied with conflicting results. This meta-analysis aimed to explore the value of ΔEtCO2 for predicting fluid responsiveness during the passive leg raising (PLR) test in patients with mechanical ventilation. Methods PubMed, Embase,...

A mathematical model has been utilized to examine the interaction between tumor cells and immune cells. In this model, the immune cells include natural killer cells, circulating lymphocytes, CD8 ⁺ T cells, CD4 ⁺ T cells, and cytokines. The model not only represents the traditional role of CD4 ⁺ T cells in activating CD8 ⁺ T cells but also illustrat...

Bioenergy is a renewable energy source that saves from fossil fuel dependence. Therefore, it is important to increase the efficiency of bioenergy investments to create an environmentally sustainable energy supply. This paper aims to identify economic indicators significant in forecasting the supply of bioenergy. Considering this goal, an integrated...

Resilient modulus (Mr) of subgrade soils is considered as one of the most important factors for designing flexible pavements using empirical methods as well as mechanistic-empirical methods. The resilient modulus is commonly measured by a dynamic triaxial loading test, which is complex and expensive. In this research, back-propagation artificial ne...

The selection of an appropriate dispatch strategy is considered as a major concern when designing hybrid energy system (HES) since it has large effects on the stability, reliability, environmental and economic performance of the system. The cycle charging (CC) strategy is a default dispatch strategy in HOMER software. However, the main drawback of...

The construction industry is a key player in total energy consumption. The design and construction of buildings shall be executed to minimize their negative environmental impacts. Many research studies have focused on reducing operational energy in the past decades. As a result, the proportion of embodied energy in the life cycle energy use of buil...

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the consumer-centric business model for rooftop solar PV installations in India. We explore areas where potential policy interventions may be introduced to improve collective stakeholder benefits and incentivize more domestic consumers to adopt rooftop solar power generation in their premises. The pro...

The Great East Japan Earthquake (GEJE) in March 2011 greatly changed the spatial pattern of energy use in Fukushima Prefecture. The previously nuclear-reliant energy policy has transformed, with energy now generated mainly by fossil fuels and renewable sources. The spatio-temporal variation of fossil fuel use and the major causes of these changes h...

With the growing penetration of converter-interfaced generation in power systems, the dynamical behavior of these systems is rapidly evolving. One of the challenges with converter-interfaced generation is the increased number of equations, as well as the required numerical timestep, involved in simulating these systems. Within this work, we explore...

Laminar burning velocities (LBV) and Markstein lengths of spherical flames of n-heptane (H), iso-octane (O), and ethanol (E) and their binary and ternary mixtures (in equal volume fractions) at elevated pressures and temperatures are experimentally investigated. Measurements are performed in a constant volume combustion vessel using two distinct te...

The demand for lithium (Li) has greatly escalated during the past decade and is predicted to increase continuously with the market growth of the electrified transportation and renewable energy, given that Li–ion batteries are the major energy storage method for these sectors. In spite of the urgent need of satisfying the increasing demand of Li, so...

Assessment of fire performance of concrete structures requires complete knowledge of material properties and constitutive relationships. The existing mathematical models present the behaviour of mechanical properties of concrete at elevated temperatures. Most proposed models are based on experimental test results with significant variation in incor...

Solar radiation falling on photovoltaic (PV) panel surface can be maximized via solar tracking systems, however, in return for infeasible investments. On the other hand, manual and periodic tilt adjustment of PVs can increase energy yield significantly and cost-effectively. Therefore, this study presents a techno-economic analysis of 1 MW PV power...

Sustainable suppliers selection is a typical multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) problem. MADM is a common problem in the field of decision-making, which is full of uncertainty and fuzziness. As a novel extension of fuzzy set (FS), probabilistic dual hesitant fuzzy set (PDHFS) can more fully and comprehensively express the uncertain and fuzzy in...

Purpose Optimal timing of intubation is controversial. We attempted to investigate the association between timing of intubation and clinical outcomes of critically ill patients. Methods PubMed was systematically searched for studies reporting on mortality of critically ill patients undergoing early versus late intubation. Studies involving patient...

Because the experimental trials in civil engineering field are difficult and time-consuming, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques is attracting considerable attention, with their use enabling successful results to be more easily obtained. In this study, we investigated the effect of fiber size, fiber amount, water content, and...

Nowadays, distribution networks experience voltage deviation and violation issues owing to the increased penetration of photovoltaic (PV) generation. The battery energy storage system (BESS) deployment is a promising solution in providing voltage regulation. However, the economic performance of BESS for voltage regulation provision cannot be ensure...

Natural gas hydrate, a crystalline solid existing under high-pressure and low-temperature conditions, has been regarded as a potential alternative energy resource. It is globally widespread and occurs mainly inside the pores of deepwater sediments and sediments under permafrost area. Hydrate production via well depressurization is deemed well-suite...

Inconsistency in the quality of workmanship, the weather during construction, and materials may result in the high unit-to-unit spatial variability of mechanical properties in the same masonry structure. This paper develops a numerical modelling strategy and focuses on the stochastic assessment of unreinforced masonry (URM) veneer walls with spatia...

The objective of this study is to investigate, optimize, and compare the combustion features and intake variables affecting the kinetics of gasoline/diesel RCCI engine by applying the genetic algorithm. Six decision variables include the fuel flow rate (FFR), premixed fuel rate (PFR), exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) rate, first injection mass ratio...

In recent years, agricultural non-point source pollution (ANPSP) has become the biggest threat to Aras River water quality by completing the Mughan irrigation and drainage network. Nutrient pollutants, including nitrate and phosphate , released into the river through drains have created a range of obstacles for locals living around the river. Agric...

Objectives The objective of this study was to evaluate the cost-utility of the Oxford, CoronaVac, and Janssen COVID-19 vaccines from the perspective of the Brazilian public health system. Methods A total of 3 microsimulation models were constructed with individual data to evaluate the 3 vaccines. The simulation contains 7 transition states that ar...

As the uncertainty and importance of securing resources increase, the nexus concept is used for integrated sustainable use management planning. In particular, because protected farms are most affected by temperature change, the connection between the heating temperature variable and resources must be analyzed. In this study, a water-energy-food-car...

Design for manufacturing is essential before launching the manufacturing processes for bio-products, where various issues must be considered in advance. Manufacturing green composites involvs several technical issues that have to be considered. Such issues include; the uniformity of the fiber distributed inside the composites, the water absorption...

Aim We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to answer the question: Does the implementation of Paediatric Early Warning Systems (PEWS) in the hospital setting reduce mortality, cardiopulmonary arrests, unplanned codes and critical deterioration events among children, as compared to usual care without PEWS? Methods We conducted a compreh...

We apply a class of stochastic differential equations to model the growth of individual animals in randomly fluctuating environments using real weight data of males of the Mertolengo cattle breed. The use of these more realistic models can help farmers to optimize their profit. To this end we obtain the probability distribution, the first two momen...

Indirect identification of bridge frequencies, which refers to identifying bridge frequencies from the dynamic response of a vehicle moving on the bridge, has the potential to fast inspect bridges in large quantities. Accurate analysis on the dynamic response of the vehicle used for sensing is crucial to the indirect frequency identification. Most...

We consider the optimal value function of a parametric optimization problem. A large number of publications have been dedicated to the study of continuity and differentiability properties of the function. However, the differentiability aspect of works in the current literature has mostly been limited to first order analysis, with focus on estimates...

Long-term and wide-ranging citizen science programs provide a unique opportunity to monitor wildlife populations and trends through time while encouraging stakeholder participation, engagement, and trust. Hunter observations is such a program that in Sweden is used on a regular basis to monitor population trends of moose. However, hunter observatio...

The coolant leaks quickly after the break of the high-pressure pipeline system. The rapid pressure decrease and fluctuation will further affect the integrity of the pressure boundary and the effective heat removal of the reactor core in the early phase of blowdown. Generally, numerical simulation plays a vital role in the safety analysis of nuclear...

In this paper, the fatigue life of pearlitic Grade 900A steel used in railway applications is investigated. To predict the fatigue life of pearlitic Grade 900A steel based on the number of cycles of the particular stress level in the load block, occurrence ratio and overload ratio, a feed-forward neural network is designed. The results of this arti...

Environmental deterioration and global warming has created a substantial impact on international companies to incorporate eco-friendly, green supply chain practices and remain competitive in the market. In food supply chain, the selection of the best supply chain management (SCM) strategy can improve the overall performance and can be crucial in ma...

We focus on elliptic quasi-variational inequalities (QVIs) of obstacle type and prove a number of results on the existence of solutions, directional differentiability and optimal control of such QVIs. We give three existence theorems based on an order approach, an iteration scheme and a sequential regularisation through partial differential equatio...

Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms (CyanoHABs) are a health-threatening and increasingly prevalent environmental issue at both regional and global levels. An improved understanding of the short-term dynamics of CyanoHABs is required to better capture their spatial pattern and temporal evolution. However, the heterogeneous and dynamic nature of Cya...

Filter pruning is one of the most effective approaches to reduce the storage and computational cost of convolutional neural networks. How to measure the importance of each filter is the key problem for filter pruning. In this work, we propose a novel method that can evaluate the importance of each filter and gradually prunes those filters with smal...

Sensitivity analysis is an important aspect of model development as it can be used to assess the level of confidence that is associated with the outcomes of a study. In many practical problems, sensitivity analysis involves evaluating a large number of parameter combinations which may require an extensive amount of time and resources. However, such...

Disposal of healthcare waste is a key issue of environmental sustainability in the world. The amount of healthcare waste is increasing every day, and it is necessary to adequately dispose of this kind of waste. There are various treatments for healthcare waste disposal, of which incineration of healthcare waste is one of the solutions. This paper s...

In this paper, we present a malaria transmission model with climatic factors to study the climatic transmission dynamics of malaria with the effect of the Serratia AS1 bacterium. It has been shown in controlled laboratory experiments that Serratia AS1 bacterium can rapidly disseminate throughout mosquito populations and efficiently inhibit developm...