Статті в журналах з теми "Automatic balancing (self-balancing)"

This article deals with automatic balancing (self-equalizing) of rotors with vertical axis of rotation by means of liquid. There used to be a statement claiming that automatic balancing was possible only after first critical (above resonance) rotation zone of rotors. However in 1995 the phenomenon of automatic balancing with liquid in both below resonance zone of rotor rotation and in the resonance itself was registered using the method of high speed video shooting. The paper suggests theoretical explanation of the phenomenon stated by means of carried out experiments.

Synchronous elimination as one of the possible methods of cancelling any harmful vibration resulting from the unbalance of rotary machines is considered. This method, introduced by Fesca and Thearle, involves the placement of unbalanced elements (e.g. ring, pendulum, ball balancers) on the rotor axis, which can occupy any angular position in relation to the rotor. Under defined conditions in the postcritical frequency range, there is a spontaneous placement of the corection elements such that they balance the rotor unbalance. Hedaya and Sharp generalized this method by combining two force balancers to compensate the unbalanced moment as well as the unbalanced force of a rigid rotor.In the present work this generalization is analysed in detail. The existence and the stability conditions of compensating phasing are developed by the method of direct motion separation, the dependence of these conditions on the polar inertia is investigated, and the validity of Blekhman's principle of self-balancing is discussed.The results are confirmed by computer simulation. Moreover, computer simulation is used to investigate transient motions induced by initial conditions.

The paper deals with analysis of dynamic stability and behavior of automatic dynamic balance (ADB) by applying theoretical approach. Differential equations of the considered system were established using Lagrange equation. Numerical analysis of the dynamic equations was performed and influence of dynamic viscosity coefficient on self-balancing process was estimated. It is demonstrated that the balancing time decreases in non-linear character. The optimal value of dynamic viscosity for achieving minimal balancing time can be determined for the analyzed system.

The use of liquid auto-balancers to compensate the operational changes in the imbalance of rotary systems without stopping them is of interest because of the relative structural simplicity of these devices, which are passive direct-acting regulators that do not require power supply and control systems to move correction masses. The experience of the study of passive auto-balancing devices (SBD) indicates that the existing theory (statements) of passive automatic balancing of the fluid is idealized and inaccurately describes the processes that occur with the working bodies during their operation. In particular, the lack of studies on the effect of liquid viscosity on the efficiency of self-balancing and the reasonableness of the selection of liquid during the development of fluid SBD demanded to analyse the operation of liquid SBD in the real system, taking into account the influence of liquid properties on the efficiency of the vertical rotor balancing process. It is shown that the efficiency of balancing increases with the approach of the angular velocity to the critical one and with the increase of the external resistance. The massive forces of the working fluid have less effect on the balancing efficiency than the viscosity for liquid SBDs.

In Long-span bridge construction by incremental launching method, due to its quiet heavy launching weight, long cantilever and complex structural stress. The dragging-type launching equipment commonly used at present no longer applies. Based on Jiubao bridge project, a new launching system of Automatic Walking-type Launching System (AWLS) was developed. This AWLS is a self-balancing launching system that integrates with functions of lifting, pushing and rectifying. It features highly automation, safety and reliability in operation. By using this system, Jiubao Bridge was successfully erected by incremental launching method for the first time as a three-span beam-arch composite bridge at home and abroad.

Autonomous lane changing, as a key module to realize high-level automatic driving, has important practical significance for improving the driving safety, comfort and commuting efficiency of vehicles. Traditional controllers have disadvantages such as weak scene adaptability and difficulty in balancing multi-objective optimization. In this paper, combined with the excellent self-learning ability of reinforcement learning, an interactive model predictive control algorithm is designed to realize the tracking control of the lane change trajectory. At the same time, two typical scenarios are verified by PreScan and Simulink, and the results show that the control algorithm can significantly improve the tracking accuracy and stability of the lane change trajectory.

Rotor rotation with liquid layer on the chamber wall under viscoelastic action of the shaft within a planar model is examined in the article. The solution to the problem of determining the deflection of a rotating shaft with liquid filled chamber is given, which is important when designing an automatic balancing device. The issue of the cooperative motion of a solid body and liquid is considered in mathematical research. The set task is performed by applying D'Alembert's principle. The modeling results indicate that an increase in liquid’s mass in a rotor decreases its critical rotation speed; at the same time, the external friction accelerates the system’s self-centering. The developed mathematical models enable us to select the design parameters of a liquid-type autobalancer which operates within the set range of rotor’s angular velocity.

The emergence of self checkout systems and transaction kiosks present an opportunity for retailers to redesign the cash management process and identify more efficient and automated solutions to improve performances within each step of the system. International and domestic retail companies from various industry segments are taking different views of opportunities to reduce the cost of cash. A socio-technical systems approach provides a foundation for anchoring predictions in process improvements and task automation and a context to identify impacts of step improvements in the Cash Flow Process. This paper provides an overview of a framework, findings from cash office operations studies of domestic and international retailers, and performance benchmarks for repetitive tasks of till balancing and till re-sets to help evaluate proposed changes in store cash office operations.

Abstract - The paper focuses on the mechanical and control system development of a receptionist robot. This is the result of a 4-month cooperation project between FPT Global Automation Company and the participation of students in Mechatronic Engineering and Electronic & Telecommunication Engineering programs of The University of Danang – University of Science and Technology (UD-UST). Robot body is based on a two-wheel self-balancing system. The movement direction is given by obstacle detection and localization systems using a Kinect camera. The humanoid robot arm can perform basic gestures, grasp object. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the control system in keeping robot stability.

This paper discusses the design of a new self-balancing amplifier of an AC component power characterized by a minimal output DC offset. The design of the amplifier is based on semiconductor technology and intended for application in low-frequency analog signal processing paths, particularly in surface-to-air missile system launcher automation circuits. The proposed solution has several design and technical-implementation advantages, whereas the primary novelty compared to the commonly used ones is the ability for self-generating a near-zero DC component value of output signal. The design features and technical parameters of the developed amplifier make it suitable for use in a wide range of devices that must ensure the stable, prolonged operation of a low-frequency power amplifier under variable weather conditions and a minimal DC offset of output signal.

Patients’ narratives about traumatic experiences and symptoms are useful in clinical screening and diagnostic procedures. In this study, we presented an automated assessment system to screen patients for posttraumatic stress disorder via a natural language processing and text-mining approach. Four machine-learning algorithms—including decision tree, naive Bayes, support vector machine, and an alternative classification approach called the product score model—were used in combination with n-gram representation models to identify patterns between verbal features in self-narratives and psychiatric diagnoses. With our sample, the product score model with unigrams attained the highest prediction accuracy when compared with practitioners’ diagnoses. The addition of multigrams contributed most to balancing the metrics of sensitivity and specificity. This article also demonstrates that text mining is a promising approach for analyzing patients’ self-expression behavior, thus helping clinicians identify potential patients from an early stage.

Hammond, T. G., E. Benes, K. C. O’Reilly, D. A. Wolf, R. M. Linnehan, J. H. Kaysen, P. L. Allen, and T. J. Goodwin. Mechanical culture conditions effect gene expression: gravity-induced changes on the space shuttle. Physiol Genomics 3: 163–173, 2000.—Three-dimensional suspension culture is a gravity-limited phenomenon. The balancing forces necessary to keep the aggregates in suspension increase directly with aggregate size. This leads to a self-propagating cycle of cell damage by balancing forces. Cell culture in microgravity avoids this trade-off. We determined which genes mediate three-dimensional culture of cell and tissue aggregates in the low-shear stress, low-turbulent environment of actual microgravity. Primary cultures of human renal cortical cells were flown on the space shuttle. Cells grown in microgravity and ground-based controls were grown for 6 days and fixed. RNA was extracted, and automated gene array analysis of the expression of 10,000 genes was performed. A select group of genes were regulated in microgravity. These 1,632 genes were independent of known shear stress response element-dependent genes and heat shock proteins. Specific transcription factors underwent large changes in microgravity including the Wilms’ tumor zinc finger protein, and the vitamin D receptor. A specific group of genes, under the control of defined transcription factors, mediate three-dimensional suspension culture under microgravity conditions.

We take a historical approach to our presentation of self-scheduled task parallelism, a programming model with its origins in early irregular and nondeterministic computations encountered in automated theorem proving and logic programming. We show how an extremely simple task model has evolved into a system, asynchronous dynamic load balancing (ADLB), and a scalable implementation capable of supporting sophisticated applications on today’s (and tomorrow’s) largest supercomputers; and we illustrate the use of ADLB with a Green’s function Monte Carlo application, a modern, mature nuclear physics code in production use. Our lesson is that by surrendering a certain amount of generality and thus applicability, a minimal programming model (in terms of its basic concepts and the size of its application programmer interface) can achieve extreme scalability without introducing complexity.

Advancements in smart technology, wearable and mobile devices, and Internet of Things, have made smart health an integral part of modern living to better individual healthcare and well-being. By enhancing self-monitoring, data collection and sharing among users and service providers, smart health can increase healthy lifestyles, timely treatments, and save lives. However, as health data become larger and more accessible to multiple parties, they become vulnerable to privacy attacks. One way to safeguard privacy is to increase users’ anonymity as anonymity increases indistinguishability making it harder for re-identification. Still the challenge is not only to preserve data privacy but also to ensure that the shared data are sufficiently informative to be useful. Our research studies health data analytics focusing on anonymity for privacy protection. This paper presents a multi-faceted analytical approach to (1) identifying attributes susceptible to information leakages by using entropy-based measure to analyze information loss, (2) anonymizing the data by generalization using attribute hierarchies, and (3) balancing between anonymity and informativeness by our anonymization technique that produces anonymized data satisfying a given anonymity requirement while optimizing data retention. Our anonymization technique is an automated Artificial Intelligent search based on two simple heuristics. The paper describes and illustrates the detailed approach and analytics including pre and post anonymization analytics. Experiments on published data are performed on the anonymization technique. Results, compared with other similar techniques, show that our anonymization technique gives the most effective data sharing solution, with respect to computational cost and balancing between anonymity and data retention.

The work concerns the research of a propulsion system for an unmanned aerial vehicle MOSUPS in joined wing configuration. Modeling, analysis and experimental research of a statically unbalanced rotor of a ducted fan propulsion system has been conducted.The aim of the analysis was to determine the critical rotational speeds of the rotor due to the probable excitation of oscillations. Due to the complex geometry, Finite Element Method has been used for the calculations. In the study, the critical frequencies (and also rotational speeds) of the rotor as well as precessional instability, flexibly mounted in the bearings have been calculated. Campbell and SAFE diagrams have been presented.Furthermore, the paper presents the idea for a device for automatic dynamic balancing of the mentioned rotor. A mechanism for changing the position of the correction weights has been developed, allowing for a long term operation of rotating parts without the need to stop the unit and correcting the unbalance.The main motivation for work was to fully understand the working conditions of the propulsion system and dynamic properties of the rotor in order to carry out a proper assessment of their impact on the safe operation of the aircraft.

Introduction. The article summarizes the results of studying the process of students’ adaptation to the learning environment in a wide range of degree programmes provided by higher educational institutions. The purpose of the article is to identify the characteristic features of students’ psychophysiological adaptation to the learning environment, taking into account the peculiarities of autonomic regulation, with the subsequent assessment of the effectiveness of using RSA-BFB therapy. Materials and Methods. The study involved 209 second-year medical and biological students. The study of neurodynamic characteristics was carried out using an automated psychophysiological complex. Heart rate variability indicators were evaluated by means of cardiorhythmography. The authors conducted a comparative analysis of the mean values and identified the correlation between neurodynamic characteristics and indicators of heart rate variability of students doing academic degrees in various fields. RSA-BFB therapy was used to increase students’ adaptive capabilities. Results. The characteristic features of adaptive reactions were revealed depending on the initial vegetative tone and the type of functional response. The combination of psychophysiological and medico-biological constitutional approaches used in the work enabled the authors to expand and clarify the ideas about the mechanism of the functional self-regulation system and classify the types of adaptive reactions in the process of educational: adaptive, compensatory and maladaptive. After the RSA-BFB therapy for students prone to maladaptive reactions, in comparison with the control group, there was an improvement in the strength of the nervous system and the mobility of nervous processes. Using RSA-BFB therapy contributed to overcoming chronic stress and developing reaction patterns inherent in adaptive types. Conclusions. The use of RSA-biofeedback therapy, taking into account the individual-typological characteristics, has contributed to balancing ergotropic and trophotropic processes, restoring the body's functional reserves and improving the efficiency of adaptation to learning environment.

Introduction: Patients in our ED were dissatisfied with their waiting experience, which resulted in patient anxiety and complaints. In 8 months, we aimed to (1) improve patient satisfaction with the ED waiting experience from triage to physician initial assessment by a 15% improvement in patients who rate their experience very good/excellent on a Likert Scale, and (2) improve patient knowledge of ED wait time by a 50% increase in understanding on a Likert Scale. Methods: We co-designed a display with ED patients to notify those in the waiting room of their wait process and wait time. The intervention was selected after root cause diagnostics including: Fishbone exercise, Pareto Diagram, and Driver Diagram. The display was co-designed with ED patients and improved via PDSA cycles to establish information displayed and how to incorporate it into the waiting experience. After co-design, a low-fidelity display was piloted in the waiting room. Results: A family of measures were evaluated using patient/provider surveys and hospital data metrics. Outcome measures were (1) percentage of patients who rated their ED experience as very good/excellent on a Likert scale, and (2) patients who had a clear/very clear understanding of their wait time on a Likert scale. Process measures were the percentage of patients who (1) looked at the wait time display, and (2) felt they could communicate their wait time to others. Balancing measures were clerk/nurse satisfaction and self-reported interruptions of patients asking wait time. Outcomes were tracked using statistical process charts and run charts. Following display implementation, patient rating of their ED experience and patient understanding of wait time showed positive improvement. Clerks/nurses were also more satisfied with their jobs and self-reported interruptions decreased. Conclusion: A low-fidelity wait time display co-designed with patients improved patient satisfaction and understanding of ED wait times. We plan to develop an automated electronic display that resembles the low-fidelity display and evaluate the impact of the intervention on the established measures. This intervention has the potential to be sustainable, feasible for other EDs, and require minimal upkeep costs.

Internet of Things (IoT) is regarded as a next-generation wave of Information Technology (IT) after the widespread emergence of the Internet and mobile communication technologies. IoT supports information exchange and networked interaction of appliances, vehicles and other objects, making sensing and actuation possible in a low-cost and smart manner. On the other hand, cyber-physical systems (CPS) are described as the engineered systems which are built upon the tight integration of the cyber entities (e.g., computation, communication, and control) and the physical things (natural and man-made systems governed by the laws of physics). The IoT and CPS are not isolated technologies. Rather it can be said that IoT is the base or enabling technology for CPS and CPS is considered as the grownup development of IoT, completing the IoT notion and vision. Both are merged into closed-loop, providing mechanisms for conceptualizing, and realizing all aspects of the networked composed systems that are monitored and controlled by computing algorithms and are tightly coupled among users and the Internet. That is, the hardware and the software entities are intertwined, and they typically function on different time and location-based scales. In fact, the linking between the cyber and the physical world is enabled by IoT (through sensors and actuators). CPS that includes traditional embedded and control systems are supposed to be transformed by the evolving and innovative methodologies and engineering of IoT. Several applications areas of IoT and CPS are smart building, smart transport, automated vehicles, smart cities, smart grid, smart manufacturing, smart agriculture, smart healthcare, smart supply chain and logistics, etc. Though CPS and IoT have significant overlaps, they differ in terms of engineering aspects. Engineering IoT systems revolves around the uniquely identifiable and internet-connected devices and embedded systems; whereas engineering CPS requires a strong emphasis on the relationship between computation aspects (complex software) and the physical entities (hardware). Engineering CPS is challenging because there is no defined and fixed boundary and relationship between the cyber and physical worlds. In CPS, diverse constituent parts are composed and collaborated together to create unified systems with global behaviour. These systems need to be ensured in terms of dependability, safety, security, efficiency, and adherence to real‐time constraints. Hence, designing CPS requires knowledge of multidisciplinary areas such as sensing technologies, distributed systems, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, real-time computing, computer networking, control theory, signal processing, embedded systems, etc. CPS, along with the continuous evolving IoT, has posed several challenges. For example, the enormous amount of data collected from the physical things makes it difficult for Big Data management and analytics that includes data normalization, data aggregation, data mining, pattern extraction and information visualization. Similarly, the future IoT and CPS need standardized abstraction and architecture that will allow modular designing and engineering of IoT and CPS in global and synergetic applications. Another challenging concern of IoT and CPS is the security and reliability of the components and systems. Although IoT and CPS have attracted the attention of the research communities and several ideas and solutions are proposed, there are still huge possibilities for innovative propositions to make IoT and CPS vision successful. The major challenges and research scopes include system design and implementation, computing and communication, system architecture and integration, application-based implementations, fault tolerance, designing efficient algorithms and protocols, availability and reliability, security and privacy, energy-efficiency and sustainability, etc. It is our great privilege to present Volume 21, Issue 3 of Scalable Computing: Practice and Experience. We had received 30 research papers and out of which 14 papers are selected for publication. The objective of this special issue is to explore and report recent advances and disseminate state-of-the-art research related to IoT, CPS and the enabling and associated technologies. The special issue will present new dimensions of research to researchers and industry professionals with regard to IoT and CPS. Vivek Kumar Prasad and Madhuri D Bhavsar in the paper titled "Monitoring and Prediction of SLA for IoT based Cloud described the mechanisms for monitoring by using the concept of reinforcement learning and prediction of the cloud resources, which forms the critical parts of cloud expertise in support of controlling and evolution of the IT resources and has been implemented using LSTM. The proper utilization of the resources will generate revenues to the provider and also increases the trust factor of the provider of cloud services. For experimental analysis, four parameters have been used i.e. CPU utilization, disk read/write throughput and memory utilization. Kasture et al. in the paper titled "Comparative Study of Speaker Recognition Techniques in IoT Devices for Text Independent Negative Recognition" compared the performance of features which are used in state of art speaker recognition models and analyse variants of Mel frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCC) predominantly used in feature extraction which can be further incorporated and used in various smart devices. Mahesh Kumar Singh and Om Prakash Rishi in the paper titled "Event Driven Recommendation System for E-Commerce using Knowledge based Collaborative Filtering Technique" proposed a novel system that uses a knowledge base generated from knowledge graph to identify the domain knowledge of users, items, and relationships among these, knowledge graph is a labelled multidimensional directed graph that represents the relationship among the users and the items. The proposed approach uses about 100 percent of users' participation in the form of activities during navigation of the web site. Thus, the system expects under the users' interest that is beneficial for both seller and buyer. The proposed system is compared with baseline methods in area of recommendation system using three parameters: precision, recall and NDGA through online and offline evaluation studies with user data and it is observed that proposed system is better as compared to other baseline systems. Benbrahim et al. in the paper titled "Deep Convolutional Neural Network with TensorFlow and Keras to Classify Skin Cancer" proposed a novel classification model to classify skin tumours in images using Deep Learning methodology and the proposed system was tested on HAM10000 dataset comprising of 10,015 dermatoscopic images and the results observed that the proposed system is accurate in order of 94.06\% in validation set and 93.93\% in the test set. Devi B et al. in the paper titled "Deadlock Free Resource Management Technique for IoT-Based Post Disaster Recovery Systems" proposed a new class of techniques that do not perform stringent testing before allocating the resources but still ensure that the system is deadlock-free and the overhead is also minimal. The proposed technique suggests reserving a portion of the resources to ensure no deadlock would occur. The correctness of the technique is proved in the form of theorems. The average turnaround time is approximately 18\% lower for the proposed technique over Banker's algorithm and also an optimal overhead of O(m). Deep et al. in the paper titled "Access Management of User and Cyber-Physical Device in DBAAS According to Indian IT Laws Using Blockchain" proposed a novel blockchain solution to track the activities of employees managing cloud. Employee authentication and authorization are managed through the blockchain server. User authentication related data is stored in blockchain. The proposed work assists cloud companies to have better control over their employee's activities, thus help in preventing insider attack on User and Cyber-Physical Devices. Sumit Kumar and Jaspreet Singh in paper titled "Internet of Vehicles (IoV) over VANETS: Smart and Secure Communication using IoT" highlighted a detailed description of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) with current applications, architectures, communication technologies, routing protocols and different issues. The researchers also elaborated research challenges and trade-off between security and privacy in area of IoV. Deore et al. in the paper titled "A New Approach for Navigation and Traffic Signs Indication Using Map Integrated Augmented Reality for Self-Driving Cars" proposed a new approach to supplement the technology used in self-driving cards for perception. The proposed approach uses Augmented Reality to create and augment artificial objects of navigational signs and traffic signals based on vehicles location to reality. This approach help navigate the vehicle even if the road infrastructure does not have very good sign indications and marking. The approach was tested locally by creating a local navigational system and a smartphone based augmented reality app. The approach performed better than the conventional method as the objects were clearer in the frame which made it each for the object detection to detect them. Bhardwaj et al. in the paper titled "A Framework to Systematically Analyse the Trustworthiness of Nodes for Securing IoV Interactions" performed literature on IoV and Trust and proposed a Hybrid Trust model that seperates the malicious and trusted nodes to secure the interaction of vehicle in IoV. To test the model, simulation was conducted on varied threshold values. And results observed that PDR of trusted node is 0.63 which is higher as compared to PDR of malicious node which is 0.15. And on the basis of PDR, number of available hops and Trust Dynamics the malicious nodes are identified and discarded. Saniya Zahoor and Roohie Naaz Mir in the paper titled "A Parallelization Based Data Management Framework for Pervasive IoT Applications" highlighted the recent studies and related information in data management for pervasive IoT applications having limited resources. The paper also proposes a parallelization-based data management framework for resource-constrained pervasive applications of IoT. The comparison of the proposed framework is done with the sequential approach through simulations and empirical data analysis. The results show an improvement in energy, processing, and storage requirements for the processing of data on the IoT device in the proposed framework as compared to the sequential approach. Patel et al. in the paper titled "Performance Analysis of Video ON-Demand and Live Video Streaming Using Cloud Based Services" presented a review of video analysis over the LVS \& VoDS video application. The researchers compared different messaging brokers which helps to deliver each frame in a distributed pipeline to analyze the impact on two message brokers for video analysis to achieve LVS & VoS using AWS elemental services. In addition, the researchers also analysed the Kafka configuration parameter for reliability on full-service-mode. Saniya Zahoor and Roohie Naaz Mir in the paper titled "Design and Modeling of Resource-Constrained IoT Based Body Area Networks" presented the design and modeling of a resource-constrained BAN System and also discussed the various scenarios of BAN in context of resource constraints. The Researchers also proposed an Advanced Edge Clustering (AEC) approach to manage the resources such as energy, storage, and processing of BAN devices while performing real-time data capture of critical health parameters and detection of abnormal patterns. The comparison of the AEC approach is done with the Stable Election Protocol (SEP) through simulations and empirical data analysis. The results show an improvement in energy, processing time and storage requirements for the processing of data on BAN devices in AEC as compared to SEP. Neelam Saleem Khan and Mohammad Ahsan Chishti in the paper titled "Security Challenges in Fog and IoT, Blockchain Technology and Cell Tree Solutions: A Review" outlined major authentication issues in IoT, map their existing solutions and further tabulate Fog and IoT security loopholes. Furthermore, this paper presents Blockchain, a decentralized distributed technology as one of the solutions for authentication issues in IoT. In addition, the researchers discussed the strength of Blockchain technology, work done in this field, its adoption in COVID-19 fight and tabulate various challenges in Blockchain technology. The researchers also proposed Cell Tree architecture as another solution to address some of the security issues in IoT, outlined its advantages over Blockchain technology and tabulated some future course to stir some attempts in this area. Bhadwal et al. in the paper titled "A Machine Translation System from Hindi to Sanskrit Language Using Rule Based Approach" proposed a rule-based machine translation system to bridge the language barrier between Hindi and Sanskrit Language by converting any test in Hindi to Sanskrit. The results are produced in the form of two confusion matrices wherein a total of 50 random sentences and 100 tokens (Hindi words or phrases) were taken for system evaluation. The semantic evaluation of 100 tokens produce an accuracy of 94\% while the pragmatic analysis of 50 sentences produce an accuracy of around 86\%. Hence, the proposed system can be used to understand the whole translation process and can further be employed as a tool for learning as well as teaching. Further, this application can be embedded in local communication based assisting Internet of Things (IoT) devices like Alexa or Google Assistant. Anshu Kumar Dwivedi and A.K. Sharma in the paper titled "NEEF: A Novel Energy Efficient Fuzzy Logic Based Clustering Protocol for Wireless Sensor Network" proposed a a deterministic novel energy efficient fuzzy logic-based clustering protocol (NEEF) which considers primary and secondary factors in fuzzy logic system while selecting cluster heads. After selection of cluster heads, non-cluster head nodes use fuzzy logic for prudent selection of their cluster head for cluster formation. NEEF is simulated and compared with two recent state of the art protocols, namely SCHFTL and DFCR under two scenarios. Simulation results unveil better performance by balancing the load and improvement in terms of stability period, packets forwarded to the base station, improved average energy and extended lifetime.

The depleting health of the soil is because of the depreciating water level continuously and is now the major concern in this modern era. This paper focuses on determining the soil moisture content in the soil by the means of help of an automatic balancing robotic system. The main objective of this paper is to develop a robotic system which moves through uneven land without tumbling or rolling over, can be easily controlled or maneuvered through rough land patches and even records data simultaneously to detect the moisture content of the soil at a particular place. The setup is such that the rover is moved through fields and then at a certain interval of time it inserts sensor electrodes in the soil and provides with the precisely accurate readings. This method will be useful for irrigation purposes. As, the farmer can focus more on that part of land and irrigating that patch which has low level of moisture content. The aim of the paper is to determine that this method can decrease the use of water for irrigation purposes.

Bicycles are a global product and are present in every culture of the world. They are extensively used for travelling, they are pollution free and easy to manufacture. However, the stability is a great problem of concern while riding a bicycle. A two-wheeler is bound to fall after being tilted more than a certain angle of tilt. This paper aims to provide a literature review of the previously methods of achieving self-balancing condition in a bicycle. Further, up to 4 methods or de-signs have been broadly classified in this paper taking into account the previously published papers on self-balancing. Also, Gyroscopes are highly stabilizing de-vices which are used as stabilizing systems in ships and flight control of aircrafts. The goal of this paper is to finalize the best possible method for building a self-balancing twowheeler prototype capable of balancing itself using a gyroscope and PID (Proportional integral derivative) controller. The gyroscope will provide the necessary balance to the bicycle at the time of tilt. The idea of a selfbalancing bicycle can be further employed in the manufacture of driverless and driver operated automated two-wheelers respectively, with a high degree of road safety and road adhesion. Finally, this paper also covers the future scope and future techniques in the field of self-balancing

An Inverted pendulum is a nonlinear system and broadly utilized as automated arm. The challenge is to balance the pendulum that can rotate in only two ways, either to the positive or to the negative direction ±180 Degree. This research work is aiming to design a controller based on self-tuned fuzzy logic and (Fuzzy-PD) for QNET-2.0 Rotary Inverted Pendulum using lab-view. This self-tuned fuzzy PD control is responsible to generate computer based signals for stable outputs and can works on errors. Rotary Inverted pendulum (RIP) is used as real time model where self- tuned fuzzy PD control is applied for stabilization. There are two aspects to the control objectives for the inverted pendulum: swing-up and balance in a typical PD system, the balancing controller is generated using a fuzzy logic controller, instead of the proportional term. the swing-up controller is generated in a standard proportional controller by using a fuzzy logic system, instead of the proportional term. To build Lab-VIEW approaches, a software development technique is used to help programmers produce code that has greater potential to solve a problem as opposed to writing code without a design. This approach also helps make coding more accessible, more flexible, and more changeable. Rotary Inverted pendulum systems were operated and managed by means of the PD module and the Fuzzy PD Module in Lab-VIEW. The fuzzy controllers are added into the system after the design of the standard PD and P controllers. The two types of controllers the fuzzy P and the fuzzy P-D, and the common proportional and standard PD, are finally implemented and evaluated on the actual inverted pendulum hardware, and also the Control system output is compared between two different control methods.

Background: As heart failure (HF) prevalence continues to climb, patient re-hospitalizations challenge collective healthcare resources across the US. Many centers have implemented care transition strategies to reduce 30-day readmissions, but impacting 90-day readmissions and sustaining those positive outcomes remain daunting. Aim: Create and implement a programmatic structure to embed a care transitions approach to HF patient care at a tertiary care medical center, sustaining reduced patient readmissions and improving the patient care experience. Methods: To effect change in our evidence-based HF care processes, we adopted a multidisciplinary team approach to develop, implement and monitor patient care processes. Post-discharge phone calls to patients proved a particularly impactful intervention. Weekly internal meetings and monthly meetings with patient and community partner participation were implemented, in addition to ongoing, multimodal communication to the frontline care team to share strategies and outcomes data. Actively engaging patients in care improvement efforts is critical to understanding and meeting their needs and inpatient interviews with empathy mapping was used. Patients participated in medication safety workshops and provided feedback on educational tools that were developed. EMR-embedded tools were created to guide workflows and facilitate analytics (outcomes/balancing measures, process measures, automated risk assessment). Routine team review of post-discharge coding, individual patient readmissions and evaluating program impact on care delivery costs were instituted. Results: 12 months of data both pre- and post- program implementation, all-cause 90-day readmissions declined by 23% from baseline 31% (160 of 524) to 24% (78 of 327). HF patient subjective reporting of feeling prepared to manage self-care post discharge improved by 6%, while understanding of medications improved by 5%. Conclusion: Impacting HF readmissions remains challenging. In executing healthcare quality improvement initiatives, implementing programmatic structure in addition to interventions is essential to sustain positive results with manageable resources. Involving the multidisciplinary team, developing community partnerships and engaging patients are key.

Introduction Scholars, journalists, conspiracists, and public-facing groups have employed a variety of analogies to discuss the role that misleading content (conspiracy theory, disinformation, malinformation, and misinformation), plays in our everyday lives. Terms like the “disinformation war” (Hwang) or the “Infodemic” (United Nations) attempt to summarise the issues of misleading content to aide public understanding. This project studies the effectiveness of these analogies in conveying the movement of online conspiracy theory in social media networks by simulating them in a game. Building from growing comparisons likening conspiracy theories to game systems (Berkowitz; Kaminska), we used game design as a research tool to test these analogies against theory. This article focusses on the design process, rather than implementation, to explore where the analogies succeed and fail in replication. Background and Literature Review Conspiracy Theories and Games Online conspiracy theories reside in the milieu of misinformation (unintentionally incorrect), disinformation (intentionally incorrect), and malinformation (intentionally harmful) (Wardle and Derakhshan 45). They are puzzled together through the vast amount of information available online (Hannah 1) creating a “hunt” for truth (Berkowitz) that refracts information through deeply personal narratives that create paradoxical interpretations (Hochschild xi). Modern social media networks offer curated but fragmented content distribution where information discovery involves content finding users through biased sources (Toff and Nielsen 639). This puzzling together of theories gives conspiracy theorists agency in ‘finding the story’, giving them agency in a process with underlining goals (Kaminska). A contemporary example is QAnon, where the narrative of a “secret global cabal”, large-scale pedophile rings, and overstepping government power is pieced together through Q-drops or cryptic clues that users decipher (Bloom and Moskalenko 5). This puzzle paints a seemingly hidden reality for players to uncover (Berkowitz) and offers gripping engagement which connects “disparate data” into a visualised conspiracy (Hannah 3). Despite their harmful impacts, conspiracy theories are playful (Sobo). They can be likened to playful acts of make-belief (Sobo), reality-adjacent narratives that create puzzles for exploration (Berkowitz), and community building through playful discovery (Bloom and Moskalenko 169). Not only do conspiracies “game the algorithm” to promote content, but they put players into in a self-made digital puzzle (Bloom and Moskalenko 17, 18). This array of human and nonhuman actors allows for truth-spinning that can push people towards conspiracy through social bonds (Moskalenko). Mainstream media and academic institutions are seen as biased and flawed information sources, prompting these users to “do their own research” within these spaces (Ballantyne and Dunning). However, users are in fragmented worldviews, not binaries of right and wrong, which leaves journalism and fact-checkers in a digital world that requires complex intervention (De Maeyer 22). Analogies Analogies are one method of intervention. They offer explanation for the impact conspiracy has had on society, such as the polarisation of families (Andrews). Both conspiracists and public-facing groups have commonly used an analogy of war. The recent pandemic has also introduced analogies of virality (Hwang; Tardáguila et al.). A war analogy places truth on a battleground against lies and fiction. “Doing your own research” is a combat maneuver for conspiracy proliferation through community engagement (Ballantyne and Dunning). Similarly, those fighting digital conspiracies have embraced the analogy to explain the challenges and repercussions of content. War suggests hardened battlelines, the need for public mobilisation, and a victory where truth prevails, or defeat where fallacy reigns (Shackelford). Comparatively, a viral analogy, or “Infodemic” (United Nations), suggests misleading content as moving through a network like an infectious system; spreading through paths of least resistance or effective contamination (Scales et al. 678; Graham et al. 22). Battlelines are replaced with paths or invasion, where the goal is to infect the system or construct a rapid response vaccine that can stymie the ever-growing disease (Tardáguila et al.). In both cases, victorious battles or curative vaccinations frame conspiracy and disinformation as temporary problems. The idea of the rise and falls of a conspiracy’s prominence as link to current events emulates Byung-Chung Han’s notion of the digital swarm, or fragmented communities that coalesce, bubble up into volatile noise, and then dissipate without addressing the “dominant power relations” (Han 12). For Han, swarms arise in digital networks with intensive support before disappearing, holding an influential but ephemeral life. Recently, scholarship has applied a media ecology lens to recognise the interconnection of actors that contribute to these swarms. The digital-as-ecosystem approach suggests a network that needs to be actively managed (Milner and Phillips 8). Tangherlini et al.’s work on conspiracy pipelines highlights the various actors that move information through them to make the digital ecosystem healthy or unhealthy (Tangherlini et al.). Seeing the Internet, and the movement of information on it, as an ecology posits a consideration of processes that are visible (i.e., conspiracy theorists) and invisible (i.e., algorithms etc.) and is inclusive of human and non-human actors (Milner and Phillips). With these analogies as frames, we answer Sobo’s call for a playful lens towards conspiracy alongside De Maeyer’s request for serious interventions by using serious play. If we can recognise both conspiracy and its formation as game-like and understand these analogies as explanatory narratives, we can use simulation game design to ask: how are these systems of conspiracy propagation being framed? What gaps in understanding arise when we frame conspiracy theory through the analogies used to describe it? Method Research-Creation and Simulation Gaming Our use of game design methods reframed analogies through “gaming literacy”, which considers the knowledge put into design and positions the game as a set of practices relating to the everyday (Zimmerman 24). This process requires constant reflection. In both the play of the game and the construction of its parts we employed Khaled’s critical design framework (10-11). From March to December 2021 we kept reflective logs, notes from bi-weekly team meetings, playtest observations, and archives of our visual design to consistently review and reassess our progression. We asked how the visuals, mechanics, and narratives point to the affordances and drawbacks of these analogies. Visual and Mechanical Design Before designing the details of the analogies, we had to visualise their environment – networked social media. We took inspiration from existing visual representations of the Internet and social media under the hypothesis that employing a familiar conceptual model could improve the intelligibility of the game (figs. 1 and 2). In usability design, this is referred to as "Jakob's law" (Nielsen), in which, by following familiar patterns, the user can focus better on content, or in our case, play. Fig. 1: “My Twitter Social Ego Networks” by David Sousa-Rodrigues. A visual representation of Sousa-Rodrigues’s social media network. <https://www.flickr.com/photos/11452351@N00/2048034334>. We focussed on the networked publics (Itō) that coalesce around information and content disclosure. We prioritised data practices that influence community construction through content (Bloom and Moskalenko 57), and the larger conspiracy pipelines of fragmented data (Tangherlini et al. 30). Fig. 2: "The Internet Map" by Ruslan Enikeev. A visual, 2D, interactive representation of the Internet. <http://internet-map.net/>. Our query focusses on how play reciprocated, or failed to reciprocate, these analogies. Sharp et al.’s suggestion that obvious and simple models are intuitively understood allowed us to employ simplification in design in the hopes of parsing down complex social media systems. Fig. 3 highlights this initial attempt where social media platforms became “networks” that formed proximity to specific groups or “nodes”. Fig. 3: Early version of the game board, with a representation of nodes and networks as simplified visualisations for social networks. This simplification process guided the scaling of design as we tried to make the seemingly boundless online networks accessible. Colourful tokens represented users, placed on the nodes (fig. 4). Tokens represented portions of the user base, allowing players to see the proliferation of conspiracy through the network. Unfortunately, this simplification ignores the individual acts of users and their ability to bypass these pipelines as well as the discovery-driven collegiality within these communities (Bloom and Moskalenko 57). To help offset this, we designed an overarching scenario and included “flavour text” on cards (fig. 5) which offered narrative vignettes that grounded player actions in dynamic story. Fig. 4: The first version for the printed playtest for the board, with the representation of “networks” formed by a clustering of "nodes". The movement of conspiracy was indicated by colour-coded tokens. Fig. 5: Playing cards. They reference a particular action which typically adds or removes token. They also reference a theory and offer text to narrativise the action. Design demonstrates that information transmission is not entirely static. In the most recent version (fig. 6), this meant having the connections between nodes become subverted through player actions. Game mechanics, such as playing cards (fig. 5), make these pipelines interactive and visible by allowing players to place and move content throughout the space in response to each other’s actions. Fig. 6: The most updated version of the board, now named "Lizards and Lies". Red regions are initial starting points for conspiracy to enter mainstream social media (purple). Design adaptations focussed on making conspiracy theory dynamic. Player choice (i.e. where to add conspiracy) had to consider a continuously changing board created by other actors to reflect the adaptive nature of conspiracy theories. In this way, analogies came alive or died through the actions of players within a visually responsive system. This meant that each game had different swarms of conspiracy, where player decisions “wrote” a narrative through play. By selecting how and where conspiracy might be placed or removed, players created a narrative distinct to their game. For example, a conspiracy theorist player (one playable character) might explain their placing of conspiracy theory within the Chrpr/Twitter network as a community response to fact-checking (second playable character) in the neighbouring Shreddit/Reddit community. Results War Analogy Initial design took inspiration from wargaming to consider battlelines, various combatants, and a simulated conflict. Two player characters were made. Conspiracy theorists were posited against fact-checkers, where nodes and networks functioned as battlelines of intervention. The war narrative was immediately challenged by the end-state. Either conspiracy overtook networks or the fact checkers completely stymied conspiracy’s ability to exist. Both end-states seemed wrong for players. Battle consistently felt futile as conspiracists could always add more content, and fact-checkers could always remove something. Simply put, war fell flat. While the game could depict communities and spaces of combat, it struggled to represent how fragmented conspiracy theories are. In play, conspiracy theory became stagnant, the flow of information felt compelled, and the actors entered uneven dynamics. Utopia was never achieved, and war always raged on. Even when players did overtake a network, the victory condition (needing to control the most networks) made this task, which would normally be compelling, feel lacklustre. To address this, we made changes. We altered the win condition to offer points at the end of each turn depending on what the player did (i.e., spreading conspiracy into networks). We expanded the number of networks and connections between them (fig. 3 and fig. 6) to include more fluid and fragmented pipelines of conspiracy dissemination. We included round-end events which shifted the state of the game based on other actors, and we pushed players to focus on their own actions more than those of the others on the board. These changes naturally shifted the battleground from hardened battle lines to a fragmented amorphous spread of disinformation; it moved war to virality. Viral Analogy As we transitioned towards the viral, we prioritised the reflexive, ephemeral movements of conspiracy proliferating through networks. We focussed less on adding and removing content and shifted to the movement of actors through the space. Some communities became more susceptible to conspiracy content, fact-checkers relied on flagging systems, and conspiracy theories followed a natural, but unexpected pipeline of content dissemination. These changes allowed players to feel like individual actors with specific goals rather than competing forces. Fact-checkers relied on mitigation and response while conspiracists evaluated the susceptibility of specific communities to conspiracy content. This change illuminated a core issue with fact-checking; it is entirely responsive, endless, and too slow to stop content from having an impact. While conspiracists could play one card to add content, fact-checkers had to flag content, move their token, and use a player card to eliminate content – all of which exacerbated this issue. In this manner, the viral approach rearticulated how systems themselves afford the spread of conspiracy, where truly effective means to stop the spread relied on additional system actors, such as training algorithms to help remove and flag content. While a more effective simulation, the viral analogy struggled in its presentation of conspiracy theory within social media. Play had a tipping point, where given enough resources, those stopping the spread of conspiracy could “vaccinate” it and clean the board. To alter this, our design began to consider actions and reactions, creating a push and pull of play focussed on balancing or offsetting the system. This transition naturally made us consider a media ecology analogy. Media Ecology Replacing utopic end-states with a need to maintain network health reframed the nature of engagement within this simulation. An ecological model recognises that harmful content will exist in a system and aims not at elimination, but at maintaining a sustainable balance. It is responsive. It considers the various human and non-human actors at play and focusses on varied actor goals. As our game shifted to an ecological model, homogenous actors of conspiracists or fact-checkers were expanded. We transitioned a two-player game into a four-player variant, testing options like literacy educators, content recommending algorithms, and ‘edgelords'. Rather than defeating or saving social media, play becomes focussed on actors in the system. Play and design demonstrated how actions would shape play decisions. Characters were seen as network actors rather than enemies, changing interaction. Those spreading conspiracy began to focus less on “viral paths”, or lines of battle, and instead on where or how they could impact system health. In some cases, conspiracists would build one network of support, in others they created pockets around the board from which they could run campaigns. Those stopping the spread came to see their job as management. Rather than try and eliminate all conspiracy, they determined which sites to engage with, what content held the greatest threat, and which tools would be most effective. Media ecology play focussed less on outsmarting opponents and instead on managing an actor’s, and other players’, goals within an evolving system. Challenging Swarms and a Turn to Digital Ecology Using games to evaluate analogies illuminates clear gaps in their use, and the value of a media ecology lens. A key issue across the two main analogies (war and virality) was a utopic endstate. The idea that conspiracy can be beaten back, or vaccinated, fails to consider the endless amount of conspiracy possible to be made, or the impossibility of vaccinating the entire system. As our transitionary design process shows, the notion of winners and losers misplaces the intent of various actors groups where conspiracy is better framed as community-building rather than “controlling” a space (Bloom and Moskalenko 57). In design, while Han’s notion of the swarm was helpful, it struggled to play out in our simulations because fragments of conspiracy always remained on the board. This lingering content suggests that fact-checking does not actually remove ideological support. Swarms could quickly regrow around lingering support presenting them not as ephemeral as Han argued. As design transitioned towards ecology, these “fragments” were seen as part of a system of actors. Gameplay shows a deep interplay between the removal of content and its spread, arguing that removing conspiracy is a band-aid solution to a larger problem. Our own simplification of analogy into a game is not without limitations. Importantly, the impact of user specific acts for interpreting a movement (Toff and Nielsen 640), and the underlying set of networks that create “dark platforms” (Zeng and Schäfer 122) were lost in the game’s translation. Despite this, our work provides directions for scholarship and those engaging with the public on these issues to consider. Reframing our lens to understand online conspiracy as an aspect of digital ecological health, asks us to move away from utopic solutions and instead focus on distinct actors as they relate to the larger system. Conclusion Employing serious play as a lens to our framing of digital conspiracy, this project emphasises a turn towards media ecology models. 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