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This paper reports on the development of a simple manufacturing process for polymeric multilayer substrates utilising the thermoplasticity of thermoplastic resin. Features and defects noted in manufacturing trials of the substrates are also reported. The process involves a polymer‐based thick film conductive paste screen printed on a hole‐punched thermoplastic resin film and dried. The films are stacked to form multiple layers and are then compressed into one unit. As the extremely thin thermoplastic resin film layers are equivalent to a single layer, a feature of this substrate is its exceptional thinness. As thermoplastic resin is used as a base material, the soldering process and other connecting technologies which may be used in place of solder connection are also examined.

Starting in the 1980s, South America went through dramatic political and economic changes. Military governments were replaced by democratic governments. These governments, forced by a severe crisis and the requirements of an increasingly competitive global economy, implemented, in the early 1990s, economic reforms based on free market principles and created the Mercosur. The major countries in this new and dynamic common market are Argentina and Brazil. In essence, these countries’ governments implemented policies conducive to competitiveness. As a result of these changes, quality became a key success factor for business. An increasing number of CEOs are becoming directly involved in quality. In Argentina, three institutions, created during the past ten years, are working in close co‐ordination to improve the country’s competitiveness. Similar activities are carried out in Brazil. A lot remains to be done in order to remain competitive in the increasingly difficult global markets.

Ammonia injection grid (AIG) is used as an input device for ammonia which reacts with NO_x in the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) reactor. However, non-uniform concentration distribution of ammonia could produce partially poisoning or deposits of the catalyst. In this work, for making ammonia widely distributed throughout the flue gas and fully mixed, an optimization method of AIG is proposed.

Depending on the complexity of fluid flow, the relation between the concentration distributions of ammonia and the geometric parameters of AIG is nonlinear. Based on a certain amount of AIG samples, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations are applied to propose the agent model which describes the functional relation of the deviation of ammonia concentration and the geometric parameters of AIG. The optimization model of AIG based on the agent model is established. The optimized AIG based on the agent model can be used to produce uniform concentration distributions of ammonia, especially in the case that velocity distribution of flue gas is non-uniform.

For qualitatively confirming this optimization method, the three-dimensional CFD simulation of the optimized AIG is carried out. The results reveal that the diffusion process of ammonia gas is consistent with the development of the local vortices, which have a certain relation with the velocity distribution of the flue gas. The unequal ammonia injection designed by the optimization based on the agent model promotes a better mixing of ammonia and flue gas.

In this work, first, the method for optimizing AIG based on the agent model is proposed. Second, the three-dimensional CFD modeling and simulation of the optimized AIG is carried out, and the mixing effects of ammonia and flue gas are presented.

A residential care is home for children who live there and is simultaneously a workplace for employees aiming to safeguard the needs and development of children. Studies have shown that adolescents’ descriptions of life in residential care are connected to feelings of otherness and deviance. The purpose of this study is to explore how adolescents in residential care in Norway relate residential care as a home to their experiences of everyday life in this context and to their relationships with the employees.

This study draws on individual, qualitative interviews with 19 boys and girls (aged 15–18 years) living in residential care homes in Norway. The interviews explored their narratives of everyday life in residential care. The adolescents were encouraged to tell about yesterday and were asked follow-up questions regarding everything that had occurred during encounters with employees. The Norwegian Center for Research Data approved the study.

The analysis shows tensions in the adolescents’ accounts between the institution as an abnormal context and their own subject position as normal. By drawing upon the terms “stigma” and “recognition” in the analysis, the study shows how recognising relationships between the youth and staff decreases the potential to experience stigma.

This study contributes to existing knowledge on social work in residential care. The paper shows how the institutional framework and employees’ practices impact adolescents’ self-understanding and their experiences of residential care as a home.

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between gender disparities in rural education attainments and agricultural landownership (ALO) in Sub-Sahara Africa with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) perspective.

This study uses SDG indicators interactions and pairwise correlation analysis.

There is a significant negative association between gender disparities in rural education attainments and ALO in Sub-Sahara Africa. Such negative relationship is not influenced by national economic development and living standards.

The data is limited with 16 Sub-Sahara African countries, and as this is an early output of a number of follow-up studies in the author’s plan, the methodology is relatively simple.

Reducing gender disparity in rural Sub-Sahara Africa especially in ALO requires more integrated approaches which also address other aspects of sustainable development. This is particularly the situation because of the strong male-favored customary practices in rural Sub-Sahara Africa. The prioritization of different dimensions of sustainable development is also important in Sub-Sahara Africa.

Strong awareness of SDGs is important. Further efforts in collecting data for and use data of sustainable development, especially the SDGs, are essential. Emerging trend of studying the interactions across SDGs reflects the future direction of relevant fields.

This paper has high originality because it is an early-stage research in the SDG interactions in Sub-Sahara African countries with the perspective of gender, gender disparity, Sub-Sahara Africa, SDGs, ALO and rural education attainments. This paper has both academic and practical values because of its innovative research thoughts and policy-oriented implications.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a signal propagation in highly metalized environments, which has not been extensively studied in the literature. Having in mind a large number of such applications, better understanding and possibly finding a way of improving communication in these conditions would be highly beneficial.

The analysis is performed in a simulation environment developed by the authors, based on finite difference time domain (FDTD) method, to identify effects that have decisive influence on electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation in the aforementioned conditions. The analysis of the EM field at the reception is modified so that a multiple-field sampling is performed, and maximal values are further used. In practical realizations, this procedure could be implemented by using multiple antennas and selective combining at the reception.

Results show that the existence of metal objects (in the observed case, these are railway tracks), in combination with the appropriate choice of antenna parameters, can be favorably used to improve signal reception. The contribution is manifested through the reduction of the pathloss.

In the performed analysis, one should be aware of the limitations that the FDTD method brings. Those limitations are related to the size of the computational domain and discretization mesh refinement (possibility of modeling geometry in fine details).

Originality of this paper consists of the introduced modification in the analysis of signal propagation in heavily metalized environment. Namely, a multiple-field sampling in the reception zone (in one plane, dimensions λ × λ = 12.5 cm X 12.5 cm) is performed using several probes in simulation environment. In this way, a qualitative analysis is performed more efficiently, which made it is possible to distinguish and identify different propagation mechanisms.

The study of the character of structural hysteretic energy under earthquake is an essential foundation for energy-based seismic design and evaluation method. The purpose of this paper is to explore the distribution law of the accumulative irrecoverable hysteretic energy for MDOF structures, a formula of the accumulated irrecoverable hysteretic energy ratio along the layers is derived.

The procedure is based on the energy balance principle and the concept of the equivalent single-degree-of-freedom system. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is carried out for 16 working conditions, considering all these possibilities of local failure or damage. And then the sensitivity influencing rule is obtained and the proposed formula is simplified.

Finally, the validation of the proposed formula is investigated through comparisons with the nonlinear time-history analysis results.

The proposed formula can be effectively to estimate the distribution of the hysteretic energy under a given ground motion.

Screening for fall risks is an important part of fall and fracture prevention. This study aims to investigate cross-sectional inter-instrumental agreement and participants’ preferences of the self-rated Falls Risk Questionnaire (FRQ) and Activities Specific Balance Confidence 6 items (ABC-6). This study also aimed to compare FRQ and ABC-6 scores in older adults with and without a history of falls.

Through an online and snowball sampling survey, 114 respondents were recruited from six countries. Respondents were asked to perform FRQ and ABC-6 surveys.

The mean respondent age was 67 years, and 44.8% reported falls in the past year. The mean of rescored FRQ and ABC-6 scores were 68.6% and 66.2%, respectively. The FRQ and ABC-6 scores for fallers were lower than non-fallers. Bland and Altman’s method indicated the mean −2.6 and two standard deviations 20.9 differences between ABC-6 and FRQ, which means an overall agreement between these tools. Most of the respondents, 36% had no preference between ABC-6 and FRQ, 34% preferred none, 21% preferred the ABC-6 and 9% preferred the FRQ for screening future falls risk.

Both ABC-6 and FRQ can distinguish between fallers and non-fallers, and findings of this study can be used to support the use of the FRQ for falls screening in older adults.