Effects of Internal Control System Deficiency on Contractors＇ Infrastructural Development Capability in the Nigerian Public Sector

Infrastructure development in Nigeria has attracted the attention of researchers in view of the attitudes of contractors and government lead-lag role playing. These attitudes led to the enactment of Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007 and Public Procurement Act 2007 to reduce internal control system deficiencies and budget indiscipline in the Nigerian public sector fiscal matters and procurement process. Ironically, despite these efforts, infrastructure development is still a problem affecting the lives of Nigerians as their poverty level is on the increase. This paper tests the effects of internal control system deficiency on contractors＇ capability in infrastructure development in the Nigerian public sector. Data drawn from a sample of 228 infrastructures were used for analysis. Two research questions on contractors＇ fiduciary obligation to government and capacity were analysed. Kendall＇s Tau-br correlation of coefficient and Chi-square X^2 statistics were employed for data analysis. Findings show that deficient internal control system strongly and directly breeds deficiency in the contractors＇ capability for infrastructure development. The paper recommends that oath of bribery should complement oath of secrecy to ensure that contractors and government agencies that are responsible for execution of infrastructure play to the rules of the ＂games＂, especially the provisions of Public Procurement Act 2007 and Fiscal Responsibility Act 2007. Public-private-partnership-initiative, such as build-operate and transfer method of contracting, should be encouraged to improve on contractors＇ capability and stewardship.

Bayesian network-based resilience assessment of interdependent infrastructure systems under optimal resource allocation strategies

Critical infrastructure systems(CISs)play a key role in the socio-economic activity of a society,but are exposed to an array of disruptive events that can greatly impact their function and performance.Therefore,understanding the underlying behaviors of CISs and their response to perturbations is needed to better prepare for,and mitigate the impact of,future disruptions.Resilience is one characteristic of CISs that influences the extent and severity of the impact induced by extreme events.Resilience is often dissected into four dimensions:robustness,redundancy,resourcefulness,and rapidity,known as the“4Rs”.This study proposes a framework to assess the resilience of an infrastructure network in terms of these four dimensions under optimal resource allocation strategies and incorporates interdependencies between different CISs,with resilience considered as a stochastic variable.The proposed framework combines an agent-based infrastructure interdependency model,advanced optimization algorithms,Bayesian network techniques,and Monte Carlo simulation to assess the resilience of an infrastructure network.The applicability and flexibility of the proposed framework is demonstrated with a case study using a network of CISs in Austin,Texas,where the resilience of the network is assessed and a“what-if”analysis is performed.

Automated knowledge graphs for complex systems (AutoGraCS): Applications to management of bridge networks

With the ability to harness the power of big data,the digital twin(DT)technology has been increasingly applied to the modeling and management of structures and infrastructure systems,such as buildings,bridges,and power distribution systems.Supporting these applications,an important family of methods are based on graphs.For DT applications in modeling and managing smart cities,large-scale knowledge graphs(KGs)are necessary to represent the complex interdependencies and model the urban infrastructure as a system of systems.To this end,this paper develops a conceptual framework:Automated knowledge Graphs for Complex Systems(AutoGraCS).In contrast to existing KGs developed for DTs,AutoGraCS can support KGs to account for interdependencies and statistical correlations across complex systems.The established KGs from AutoGraCS can then be easily turned into Bayesian networks for probabilistic modeling,Bayesian analysis,and adaptive decision supports.Besides,AutoGraCS provides flexibility in support of users’need to implement the ontology and rules when constructing the KG.With the user-defined ontology and rules,AutoGraCS can automatically generate a KG to represent a complex system consisting of multiple systems.The bridge network in Miami-Dade County,FL is used as an illustrative example to generate a KG that integrates multiple layers of data from the bridge network,traffic monitoring facilities,and flood water watch stations.

Exploration of The Construction Path of Sports Injury and First Aid Course Systems for College Students

By the requirements of the Ministry of Education on life safety education, colleges, and universities have set up a course on Sports Injury and First Aid to organize relevant knowledge and increase the student’s awareness of first aid knowledge so that they can use reasonable methods to address sport-related injuries. At the same time, they can cope with first-aid situations and assist rescuers in completing resuscitation activities. This paper is based on the study of three colleges in Chongqing. This paper selected students from 3 universities in Chongqing and evaluated the mastery of first aid knowledge of college students, pointing out the value of implementing the “Sports Injury and First Aid” course in colleges and universities. This can provide opportunities to improve the theoretical content of the discipline, actively carry out practical activities, reasonably set the assessment method, and provide basic protection to ensure that the “Sports Injury and First Aid” course can be carried out normally to improve the mastery level of students’ first aid knowledge.

Effects of regulating intestinal microbiota on anxiety symptoms: A systematic review

Background Anxiety symptoms are common in mental diseases and a variety of physical disorders, especially in disorders related to stress. More and more basic studies have indicated that gut microbiota can regulate brain function through the gut-brain axis, and dysbiosis of intestinal microbiota was related to anxiety. However, there is no specific evidence to support treatment of anxiety by regulating intestinal microbiota. Aims To find evidence sup porting improvement of anxiety symptoms by regulation of intestinal microbiota. Methods This systematic review of randomised controlled trials was searched based on the following databases: PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, OVID, Web of Knowledge, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, VIP databases and SinoMed. The retrieval time dated back to 25 July 2018. Then we screened research literatures based on established inclusion and exclusion criteria. Quality evaluation for each included study was done using the Cochrane risk of bias and the Jadad scale. Results A total of 3334 articles were retrieved and 21 studies were included which contained 1503 subjects. In the 21 studies, 15 chose probiotics as interventions to regulate intestinal microbiota and six chose non-probiotic ways such as adjusting daily diets. Probiotic supplements in seven studies contained only one kind of probiotic, two studies used a product that contained two kinds of probiotics and the supplements used in the other five studies included at least three kinds of probiotics. In the studies that used treatment as usual plus interventions regulating intestinal flora (IRIF) as interventions (five studies), only non-probiotic ways were effective (two studies), which means 40% of studies were effective;in the studies that used IRIF alone (16 studies, 11 studies used probiotic ways and 5 studies used non-probiotic ways), 56% of studies could improve anxiety symptoms, and 80% of studies that conducted the non-probiotic interventions were effective, while 45% of studies that used probiotic supplementations had positive effects on anxiety symptoms. Overall, 11 studies showed a positive effect on anxiety symptoms by regulating intestinal microbiota, which indicated 52% of the 21 studies were effective, and there were five studies that used probiotic supplements as interventions and six used non-probiotic interventions. In addition, it should be noted that six of seven studies showed that regulation of intestinal microbiota could treat anxiety symptoms, the rate of efficacy was 86%.Conclusions We find that more than half of the studies included showed it was positive to treat anxiety symptoms by regulation of intestinal microbiota. There are two kinds of interventions (probiotic and non-probiotic interventions) to regulate intestinal microbiota, and it should be highlighted that the non-probiotic interventions were more effective than the probiotic interventions. More studies are needed to clarify this conclusion since we still cannot run meta-analysis so far.

Prospects for key technologies of new-type urban integrated energy system

In recent years,primary energy consumption in China’s urban areas has increased rapidly,facing the problems of extensive use of energy,high energy consumption and insufficient intensified use of energy resources.Improving multienergy supply,increasing the proportion of clean energy and integrated energy efficiency are the main goals of urban development.The integrated energy system with multi-functional synergy and open trading will become one of the new directions for the development of new urban energy systems.This paper summarizes the main problems faced by the current towns and the characteristics of the new urban energy system,analyzes the development of new urban energy system from three aspects including energy interconnection hub infrastructure construction,energy management platform construction and energy value sharing,and forecasts the future development direction of new urban energy systems.

Regional container transportation system for Northeast Asia economic cooperation in the 21^(st) century

In this paper, the roles of infrastructure development and transportation coordination for Northeast Asian economic cooperation are discussed. It would be necessary to establish an efficient transportation network as soon as possible. 'Hub-and-Spoke'transportation system and China-Korean peninsula railway container transportation system might be more significant for regional economic cooperation.

The Development of the Qatar Healthcare System: A Review of the Literature

Background: Qatar, one of the smallest and wealthiest countries in the world, is a newly emerging healthcare system. Medical leadership in Qatar has had to create an infrastructure for medical care over the past twenty years. The purpose of this paper is to review the challenges and achievements of the newly emerging Qatar healthcare system. Methods: PubMed was searched using MESH terms: Qatar, healthcare, medical development, medical insurance and medical history. Websites of the World Bank, CIA fact book, Qatar Ministry of Health, Hamad Medical Corporation, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the US State department were searched for information about Qatar’s healthcare system and its history. Results: Qatar is a rapidly growing, multicultural country with over 80 nationalities represented. Qatar has developed a healthcare system with universal coverage. Up until 2014, the government has subsidized all care. There are plans to develop a medical insurance system. Conclusions: Qatar has experienced the rapid development of a healthcare system over the past twenty years. The government has centrally controlled growth and development. An examination of the unique challenges to building a Qatari healthcare system will be useful in considering how to develop medical infrastructure in other countries.

Technologies Behind the Smart Grid and Internet of Things: A System Survey

Electric smart grids enable a bidirectional flow of electricity and information among power system assets.For proper monitoring and con-trolling of power quality,reliability,scalability and flexibility,there is a need for an environmentally friendly system that is transparent,sustainable,cost-saving,energy-efficient,agile and secure.This paper provides an overview of the emerging technologies behind smart grids and the internet of things.The dependent variables are identified by analyzing the electricity consumption patterns for optimal utilization and planning preventive maintenance of their legacy assets like power distribution transformers with real-time parameters to ensure an uninterrupted and reliable power supply.In addition,the paper sorts out challenges in the traditional or legacy electricity grid,power generation,transmission,distribution,and revenue management challenges such as reduc-ing aggregate technical and commercial loss by reforming the existing manual or semi-automatic techniques to fully smart or automatic systems.This article represents a concise review of research works in creating components of the smart grid like smart metering infrastructure for postpaid as well as in prepaid mode,internal structure comparison of advanced metering methods in present scenarios,and communication systems.

Green Infrastructure and Its Inspiration for Urban Green Space System in China

Currently, urban Green Space Systems in China show fragile ecological conditions, the overseas Green Infrastructure is a new idea to construct urban green ecological spaces. Typical Green Infrastructure construction cases in the U. K., such as London greenbelt, park system, green corridor, green chain and Green Grid were studied to analyze problems of China urban Green Space System planning, construction, and management, so as to propose suggestions for improving ecological functions of the urban Green Space System.

The Influence of Climate Factors on the Stability of Infrastructures: Case of Forest Ecosystem in Southern Cameroon

The southern forest ecosystem of Cameroon extends from latitude 2° to 6°N and from 10° to 16°E. In order to investigate about the influence of climate factors on the infrastructures, the main parameters of local climate of that ecosystem have been evaluated. The results show that, the factors are stable and have a common trend. But, the abundance of precipitations;the important hydrographic network and the presence of dense forest appear as the majors climatic constraints that may be taken in account to ensure the stability of the infrastructures in forest ecosystem.

The Use of Life Cycle Management Principles in Biosystems Engineering： A Pragmatic Approach to Solving Agri-industrial Sustainability Problems

LCM （life cycle management） is a systematic approach, mindset and culture that considers economic, social, and environmental factors among other factors in the decision making process throughout various business or organizational decisions that affect both inputs and outputs of a product or service life cycle. It is a product, process, or activity management system aimed at minimizing environmental and socio-economic burdens associated with an organization＇s product or process during its entire life cycle and value chain. LCM＇s application is gaining wider acceptance both in the corporate and governmental organizations as an approach to reduce ecological footprints and to improve the sustainability of human activities. But where and how can it be used in agricultural engineering applications？ This study highlights the potential areas of LCM application in agricultural and allied sectors and how it can be utilized. The study revealed that LCM tools such as design for environment and life cycle analysis can be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of-and to improve the products, equipment, and structures produced by biosystems engineers as well as the processes used to generate them.

Resilience of aging structures and infrastructure systems with emphasis on seismic resilience of bridges and road networks:Review

Risk assessment and mitigation programs have been carried out over the last decades in the attempt to reduce transportation infrastructure downtime and post-disaster recovery costs.Recently,the concept of resilience gained increasing importance in design,assessment,maintenance,and rehabilitation structures and infrastructure systems,particularly bridges and transportation networks,exposed to natural and man-made hazards.In the field of disaster mitigation,frameworks have been proposed to provide a basis for development of qualitative and quantitative models quantifying the functionality and resilience at various scales,including components,groups and systems within infrastructure networks and communities.In these frameworks,the effects of aging and environmental aggressiveness must be explicitly considered,affecting the structural performance and functionality of civil infrastructure systems.Significant efforts have been made to incorporate risk and resilience assessment frameworks into informed decision making to decide how to best use resources to minimize the impact of hazards on civil infrastructure systems.This review paper is part of these efforts.It presents an overview of the main principles and concepts,methods and strategies,advances and accomplishments in the field of life-cycle reliability,risk and resilience of structures and infrastructure systems,with emphasis on seismic resilience of bridges and road networks.

Model of Security Evaluation of Infrastructure as a Service Layer of Cloud Computing System

At present,most providers of cloud computing mainly provide infrastructures and services of infrastructure as a service(IaaS).But there is a serious problem that is the lack of security standards and evaluation model of IaaS.After analyzing the vulnerabilities performance of IaaS cloud computing system,the mapping relationship was established between the vulnerabilities of IaaS and the nine threats of cloud computing which was released by cloud security alliance(CSA).According to the mapping relationship,a model for evaluating security of IaaS was proposed which verified the effectiveness of the model on OpenStack by the analytic hierarchy process(AHP) and the fuzzy evaluation method.

Assessing the effectiveness of disaster risk reduction strategies on the regional recovery of critical infrastructure systems

Communities depend on critical infrastructure systems to support their regular operations and future develop-ment.Destructive events,such as natural disasters,threaten to disrupt service to these systems and the commu-nities they support.Strategies designed to reduce the impacts from disasters and other events are therefore an important consideration for community planning.At a regional level,coordination between communities sup-ports the efficient use of resources for implementing disaster risk reduction(DRR)measures and completing post-disaster repairs to meet the needs of all residents.Coordination is challenging,however,due to the complex-ity of regional systems and competing stakeholder interests.This work presents a case study model of regional water,wastewater,and power systems,and demonstrates the effect of seismic hardening and increased resource availability on post-earthquake repair requirements and critical infrastructure recovery.Model results indicate that implementing DRR strategies can reduce required repair costs by over 40 percent and outage severity by approximately 50 percent for the studied sectors.Not all strategies are effective for all sectors and locations,how-ever,so this work discusses the importance of comprehensive,coordinated,and accessible emergency planning activities to ensure that the needs of all residents are considered.

Knowledge-intensive Business Services in National Innovation Systems

In order to find the roles of knowledge-intensive business services （KIBS） in the innovation activities, This paper focus on three perspectives. First, we find that KIBS possess good prerequisites to function as vehicles in innovation distribution, the sources of innovation and the facilitators of innovation in their client firms. Second, we further discuss KIBS as the knowledge and innovation infrastructure of society in parallel with the research, educational and other public institutions. Third, we present some research policies and agenda to promote the development of KIBS. It is regarded that much remains to be studied both in the use of KIBS and in their own activities, including integrating and networking the knowledge-intensive services into the client companies, the convergence of various services and closer connection with the client companies＇ strategy, and the national policies to connect the KIBS to the different sectors.

China＇s Land System and Its Extraordinary Infrastructure Development

Over the past two decades, China's infrastructure development has been extraordinary in the sense that it far exceeds GDP growth rate and unconventional in the sense that it cannot be explained with existing theories on infrastructure development.This paper found that the transformation of China's land system is an important clue:China's extraordinary infrastructure development is a result that can be explained with the transformation of its land system. Theoretically, this paper proves that with other conditions held constant, the difference of land systems has a significant effect on the optimal infrastructure supply of regions. Empirically, it can be found through the test of cross-country panel data that the transformation of China's land system around the 1990 s indeed exerted an overall impact on China's extraordinary infrastructure development. This paper implies that China's "land-supported infrastructure development" model has been pivotal to its extraordinary infrastructure development. Under the Belt and Road Initiative,China's experience of land-supported infrastructure development is of broad significance for developing countries to boost their infrastructure development.

Delivery Invoice Information Classification System for Joint Courier Logistics Infrastructure

With the growth of the online market,demand for logistics and courier cargo is increasing rapidly.Accordingly,in the case of urban areas,road congestion and environmental problems due to cargo vehicles are mainly occurring.The joint courier logistics system,a plan to solve this problem,aims to establish an efficient logistics transportation system by utilizing one joint logistics delivery terminal by several logistics and delivery companies.However,several courier companies use different types of courier invoices.Such a system has a problem of information data transmission interruption.Therefore,the data processing process was systematically analyzed,a practically feasible methodology was devised,and delivery invoice information processing standards were established for this.In addition,the importance of this paper can be emphasized in terms of data processing in the logistics sector,which is expected to grow rapidly in the future.The results of this study can be used as basic data for the implementation of the logistics joint delivery terminal system in the future.And it can be used as a basis for securing the operational reliability of the joint courier logistics system.

Architecture and System Design for a CIM Integrating Infrastructure

This paper introduces the plan of a research project,in which a prototype system of the CIM-OSA-Integrating Infrastructure,HIT-IIS,will be implemented.Based on the analysis of requirements and environments,the architecture and the plan of HIT-IIS are proposed.

A DRM System Based on Mobile Agent for Digital Rights Redistribution

We propose a digital rights management （DRM） system based on mobile agent to protect the copyrights of content providers. In the system, the content provider creates a time limited blackbox out of an original agent and dispatches it to the user end to enforce DRM functions. The blackbox is an agent that can resist the attacks from the malicious user in a certain time interval. Owing to digital rights redistribution support, the user whose rights belong to redistribution category can transfer his rights to other users. Moreover, by introducing public key infrastructure （PKI） and certificate authority （CA） role, the security of the session can be ensured. An analysis of system security and performance and a comparison with traditional DRM system is given.