In recent years, we have been faced with a series of natural disasters causing a tremendous amount of financial, environmental and human losses. The unpredictable nature of natural disasters ...behaviour makes it hard to have a comprehensive situational awareness (SA) to support disaster management. Using opinion surveys is a traditional approach to analyse public concerns during natural disasters; however, this approach is limited, expensive and time-consuming. Luckily, the advent of social media has provided scholars with an alternative means of analysing public concerns. Social media enable users (people) to freely communicate their opinions and disperse information regarding current events including natural disasters. This research emphasises the value of social media analysis and proposes an analytical framework: Twitter Situational Awareness (TwiSA). This framework uses text mining methods including sentiment analysis and topic modelling to create a better SA for disaster preparedness, response and recovery. TwiSA has also effectively deployed on a large number of tweets and tracks the negative concerns of people during the 2015 South Carolina flood.
Conscious Empathic AI in Service Esmaeilzadeh, Hadi; Vaezi, Reza
Journal of service research : JSR,
11/2022, Letnik:
25, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have achieved human-scale speed and accuracy for classification tasks. Current systems do not need to be conscious to recognize patterns and classify ...them. However, for AI to advance to the next level, it needs to develop capabilities such as metathinking, creativity, and empathy. We contend that such a paradigm shift is possible through a fundamental change in the state of artificial intelligence toward consciousness, similar to what took place for humans through the process of natural selection and evolution. To that end, we propose that consciousness in AI is an emergent phenomenon that primordially appears when two machines cocreate their own language through which they can recall and communicate their internal state of time-varying symbol manipulation. Because, in our view, consciousness arises from the communication of inner states, it leads to empathy. We then provide a link between the empathic quality of machines and better service outcomes associated with empathic human agents that can also lead to accountability in AI services.
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•Epoxy- graphene oxide (GO) nanocomposite coatings are prepared successfully.•GO significantly improves corrosion resistance and adhesion of epoxy coatings.•The viscosity of polymer ...matrix has great effect on GO dispersion quality.•The effect of GO dispersion quality on corrosion resistance is studied.•Nanocomposite coatings with different GO wt.% show different corrosion resistance.
Solvent-based epoxy coatings filled with graphene oxide nanosheets (GO) are developed to enhance the corrosion protection of mild steel substrates. Results reveal that GO distribution in polymer matrix is the most important parameter influencing coating performance. Viscosity of polymer matrix and GO weight percent (wt.%) are exceptional aspects for GO dispersion quality. Among nanocomposites prepared with different methods and GO wt.% (0.05, 0.1, 0.3, and 0.5), coatings prepared via direct addition of 0.1wt.% GO to polymer matrix with lower viscosity show desirable GO dispersion quality, better adhesion to substrate, outstanding barrier properties and superior corrosion protection under NaCl electrolyte.
Exemplar-based learning or, equally, nearest neighbor methods have recently gained interest from researchers in a variety of computer science domains because of the prevalence of large amounts of ...accessible data and storage capacity. In computer vision, these types of technique have been successful in several problems such as scene recognition, shape matching, image parsing, character recognition, and object detection. Applying the concept of exemplar-based learning to the problem of color constancy seems odd at first glance since, in the first place, similar nearest neighbor images are not usually affected by precisely similar illuminants and, in the second place, gathering a dataset consisting of all possible real-world images, including indoor and outdoor scenes and for all possible illuminant colors and intensities, is indeed impossible. In this paper, we instead focus on surfaces in the image and address the color constancy problem by unsupervised learning of an appropriate model for each training surface in training images. We find nearest neighbor models for each surface in a test image and estimate its illumination based on comparing the statistics of pixels belonging to nearest neighbor surfaces and the target surface. The final illumination estimation results from combining these estimated illuminants over surfaces to generate a unique estimate. We show that it performs very well, for standard datasets, compared to current color constancy algorithms, including when learning based on one image dataset is applied to tests from a different dataset. The proposed method has the advantage of overcoming multi-illuminant situations, which is not possible for most current methods since they assume the color of the illuminant is constant all over the image. We show a technique to overcome the multiple illuminant situation using the proposed method and test our technique on images with two distinct sources of illumination using a multiple-illuminant color constancy dataset. The concept proposed here is a completely new approach to the color constancy problem and provides a simple learning-based framework.
•Superhydrophobic silica film was prepared by sol–gel process.•The surfaces exhibited superhydrophobicity with water contact angle greater than 150°.•AFM images showed the roughness increases with ...increasing the percentage of silylation agent.•Before and after modification, the particle size of silica was lower than 50nm.
Schematic illustration of the surface modification of the silica nanoparticle by iso-OTMS on the glass substrate.
In this paper, we study the two-step dip coating via a sol–gel process to prepare superhydrophobic silica films on the glass substrate. The water repellency of the silica films was controlled by surface silylation method using isooctyltrimethoxysilane (iso-OTMS) as a surface modifying agent. Silica alcosol was synthesized by keeping the molar ratio of ethyltriethoxysilane (ETES) precursor, ethanol (EtOH) solvent, water (H2O) was kept constant at 1:36:6.6 respectively, with 6M NH4OH throughout the experiment and the percentages of hydrophobic agent in hexane bath was varied from 0 to 15vol.%. The static water contact angle values of the silica films increased from 108° to 160° with an increase in the vol.% of iso-OTMS. At 15vol%. of iso-OTMS, the silica film shows static water contact angle as high as 160°. The superhydrophobic silica films are thermally stable up to 440°C and above this temperature, the silica films lose superhydrophobicity. By controlling the primer particle size of SiO2 about 26nm, leading to decrease the final size of silica nanoparticles after modification of nanoparticles by isooctyltrimethoxysilane about 42nm. The films are transparent and have uniform size on the surface. The silica films have been characterized by atomic force microscopy (AFM), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), transparency, contact angle measurement (CA), Zeta-potential, Thermal stability by TG–DTA analysis.
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•Temporal decrease in the contribution of raindrop impact (RI) in rill detachment.•More contribution of RI in rill detachment in soils with higher stable aggregates.•The use of ...sediment’s PSD for detemining the sediment size selectivity in rills.•More dependency of sediment enrichment ratio on soil texture than slope gradient.•Quantifying the sediment homogeneity using dg and δg measures.
Limited information is available on the role of raindrop impact (RI) in the particle size distribution of sediment (PSDs) and the homogeneous of sediment particles eroded in rills under slope gradients particularly in semi-arid soils. Toward this, a laboratory experiment was designed with three dominant semi-arid soils consist of loamy sand, clay and sandy clay, at four slope gradients (5, 10, 15, and 20%) under two soil surface conditions (SSC) i.e, with raindrop impact (RI) and without RI using a rainfall simulator with 90 mm h−1 in intensity for 30 min. Forty eight rainfall events were setted up to soil samples packed into the flumes with 0.4 m width by 4 m length. Runoff and sediment ratio for the two SSC was computed using the ratio of values with RI to their values without RI in each time interval from starting runoff. Based on the results, the soils appeared different behavior in runoff and sediment ratio during runoff generation time. In clay and sandy clay, contribution of RI in runoff and sediment increased during runoff generation in the rills which was associated to higher percentage of water-stable aggregates. The two soils produced higher runoff and sediment under RI with increasing slope gradient. The sediment selectivity by concentrated flow was determined using the comparison between PSDs in steady-state runoff and the PSD of original soil (PSDo). The PSDs curves of loamy sand were similar for the two SSC at slope gradients and overlapped almost with the PSDo, indicating lower importance of RI in the sediment transport selectivity in the soil with lower water-stable aggregates. Enrichment ratio of particles in sediment (ERs) varied with both soil texture and slope gradient. The contribution of RI in variation of ERs was more obvious in sand, indicating lower selectivity of sand to detachment by concentrated flow. The geometric mean diameter (dg) and standard deviation (δg) of the sediment particles were defined as a measure to determination of the homogeneity of sediment. Values of these indices increased under RI, indicating the contribution of RI in the transportability of all soil particles especially coarse particles. This study revealed that the RI is the major factor controlling runoff, sediment, the selectivity of soil particle by concentrated flow and sediment homogeneity in semi-arid soils. These variables can be quantified by PSDs, ERs, dg and δg for the two soil surface conditions and compared with the original soil.
The cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops in order to ensure food security and reduce the world’s hungry population has taken an upturn since 1996. This research is made to investigate the ...liability arising from the cultivation and supply of GM crops to consumers in the context of Iran and the EU through a comparative view. In Iran, GM crops cultivation began in 1985, and today a variety of products is available in the food basket of consumers. The European Union (EU) strongly opposed the cultivation and marketing of GM crops from 1996 to 2003. The EU has been protecting the rights of consumers since 2003 by lifting various bans and restrictions on the cultivation, supply and import of GM crops. One of the main reasons for the EU’s opposition to the cultivation and supply of GM crops is misgiving about harming consumers, compromising the health of consumers and causing environmental pollution. The authors suggest that legislators in Iran, like the EU, recognize the system of strict liability by amending the laws in order to pass laws that protect the environment and consumers from the potential risks of GM crops and transgenic products and, therefore, must accept the strict liability system.
Altered redox balance is among the main contributing factors developing glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a highly aggressive grade IV brain tumor. Neuropeptide substance P (SP) plays a key role in ...modifying the cellular redox environment by activating the neurokinin-1 receptor (NK1R). In this study, we aimed to investigate the redox-modulating properties of both SP and a commercially available NK1R antagonist, aprepitant in GBM cells. To detect the effect of aprepitant on the viability of U87 glioblastoma cells, resazurin assay was applied. The level of intracellular ROS was assessed using 2′,7′-dichlorodihydrofluorescein diacetate (H2DCFDA) assay. The expression of glutaredoxin, a well-known redox-active protein, was measured by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). Concurrently, the activity of glutaredoxin was also analyzed by a commercial kit (ZellBio GmbH). We found that SP increased the intracellular levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in U87 GBM cells, and aprepitant remarkably decreased this effect. We also explored the effects of SP/NK1R signaling on the glutaredoxin system as a major cellular redox buffer in GBM cells. SP reduced both expression and enzymatic activity of glutaredoxin, and these effects were significantly decreased by aprepitant. In conclusion, our results suggest a possible involvement of SP/NK1R signaling in GBM pathogenesis through oxidative stress and offering new insight for the application of aprepitant as a redox-modulating strategy in GBM patients.
Abstract
In this report, the novel UiO‑66‑NH
2
based-MOF(Zr) catalytic system which further modified with nitrogen-rich organic ligand (5-aminotetrazole) using post synthetic modification (PSM) ...approach has been prepared here as an efficient catalyst to promote the A
3
-coupling preparation of propargyl amines in green aquatic media. This newly highly efficient catalyst was synthesized upon Zr-based MOF (UiO‑66‑NH
2
) which successfully functionalized with 2,4,6‑trichloro‑1,3,5‑triazine (TCT) and 5‑aminotetrazole, following through stabilization of gold metal (Au) nanopartilces. The addition of
N
-rich organic ligand through post-synthesis modification which can be assisted to stabilize the bister and stable gold nanoparticles caused to unique structure of the final composite in favor of the progress of the A
3
coupling reaction. Also several strategies comprising XRD, FT-IR, SEM, BET, TEM, TGA, ICP, EDS and elemental mapping analyzes, were used to indicate the successful preparation of the UiO-66-NH
2
@ Cyanuric Chloride@ 5-amino tetrazole/Au-NPs. The results of productivity catalyst are accomplished in good to excellent yields for all sort of reactions under mild conditions which is a proof of superior activity heterogeneous catalyst containing Au-nanoparticles. In addition, the suggested catalyst represented excellent reusability with no remarkable loss in activity up 9 sequential runs.
Mentha
piperita
L., which is an abundant source of essential oils (EO) and phenolic acids, is well known for its medicinal significance. The present research aimed to evaluate the impact of ...various concentrations of methyl jasmonate (MeJA; 0, 0.1, and 0.5 mM), titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO
2
NPs; 0 and 150 mg L
−1
), and salicylic acid (SA; 0, 0.1, and 1 mM) on growth, EOs, and phenolic compounds of
M.
piperita
L. The results demonstrated that the simultaneous application of SA (0.1 mM) and TiO
2
NPs (150 mg L
−1
) enhanced shoot dry weight, the shoot length, and membrane stability index of peppermint by 56.17, 19.52, and 36%, respectively, compared to control. Moreover, phenolic content (76%), caffeic acid content (78%), rosmarinic acid content (87%), 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging ability (78%), and catalase (155%), ascorbate peroxidase activities (95%) were further improved by simultaneously applying MeJA (0.1 mM) and TiO
2
NPs (150 mg L
−1
) compared to control. The highest menthol production (44.51%) was obtained with exogenous application of MeJA (0.1 mM) with 150 mg L
−1
TiO
2
NPs. The findings of the current study presented an ideal combination of TiO
2
NPs with plant growth regulators for promoting antioxidant activities and increasing major components of EO in peppermint plants.
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