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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the fatigue life of the crankshaft in an engine with increased horsepower.

The applied load on the powertrain components was calculated through a dynamic analysis. Then, to estimate the induced stress in every crank angle, the calculated loads in different engine speeds were applied on the crankshaft. Finally, the critical plane fatigue theories in addition to URM standard were used to estimate the damage and fatigue life of the crankshaft with the increased power.

It was found that a simultaneous increase of gas pressure and engine speed by 30 percent will cause an increase of maximum applied load on the crankshaft by 25 percent. It was also found that while the results of finite element (FE) method predict an infinite life for the crankshaft after increasing the power, the URM method predicts an engine failure for the increased power application. In this study, the crankpin fillet is introduced as the most critical area of the crankshaft.

Increasing the power of the internal combustion engines without changing its main components has been of high interest; however, the failure associated with the increased load as the result of increased power has been a big challenge for that purpose. Moreover, although URM standard provided an efficient practice to evaluate a crankshaft fatigue life, using FE analysis may provide more reliability.

Unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs) are known to be subjected to several potentially traumatic life events, risking more mental health problems than other populations of same age. Evidence concerning the mental health of Eritrean URMs in Ethiopia is scarce. This paper aims to present an estimate of probable posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within this group and describes its associations with traumatic life events and participants’ characteristics.

This cross-sectional quantitative study surveyed a random sample of 384 Eritrean URMs, aged 12–17 years, in the Shimelba refugee camp. The Stressful Life Events (SLE) questionnaire and the Reactions of Adolescents to Traumatic Stress (RATS) questionnaire were used to assess traumatic events and PTSD symptoms, respectively. Descriptive statistics, the chi-square test with the odds-ratio and stepwise regression were used to analyze data.

Large proportions of the URMs had experienced traumatic events including physical abuse (261, 68%), separation from family against will (240, 62.5%), a stressful life event in which they were in danger (198, 51.6%), and important changes in family life (196, 51%). About 38% of the URMs met the criteria for classifying probable PTSD diagnosis, suggesting that they are likely to have PTSD. The odds-ratio statistic revealed that girls and the oldest age group (15–17 years) were at a greater risk for PTSD. The total score on the SLE appeared to be the robust predictor, explaining 28% of the variance in RATS total scores.

Self-report questionnaires used in this study yield less diagnostic information than extensive interviews. Additional information should be collected from the viewpoint of significant adults (caregivers/ teachers). Such information would be crucial in assessing the degree of impairment in daily functioning and the severity of the symptoms.

Awareness of the stressful experiences and the mental health status of the URMs has implications for taking preventive and curative measures to provide a broad range of intervention programs and psychosocial support.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the degree to which Islamic banks in Pakistan use risk management practices (RMPs) and techniques in dealing with different types of risk.

A standardized questionnaire is used which covers six aspects: understanding risk and risk management (URM), risk assessment and analysis (RAA), risk identification (RI), risk monitoring (RM), credit risk analysis (CRA) and RMPs.

This study found that the Islamic banks are somewhat reasonably efficient in managing risk where URM, RM and CRM are the most influencing variables in RMPs.

The paper's findings are limited to the RMPs of Islamic banks in Pakistan.

This paper explores the RMPs of the Islamic banks in Pakistan. The results can be used as a valuable feedback for improvement of RMPs in the Islamic banks in Pakistan and will be of value to those people who are interested in the Islamic banking system.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how formal verification strategies have been utilized to assess the correctness of Knowledge Creation Process (KCP) in the social systems. This paper analyzes a User Relationship Management (URM) approach in term of human behavior connection in the social systems. A formal framework is displayed for the URM which consolidates behavioral demonstrating strategy.

Evaluating the human behavior interactions is an important matter in the social systems. For this analysis, formal verification is an essential section in the complex information systems development. Model checking results satisfied the logical problems in the proposed behavior model analysis.

Model checking results represent satisfaction of the logical problems in the proposed behavior model analysis. In the statistical testing, the proposed URM mechanism supported KCP conditions. Also, the percentage of state reachability in the URM with KCP conditions is higher than the URM mechanism without supporting KCP conditions.

The model checking results show that the proposed URM mechanism with supporting the KCP conditions satisfies comprehensively behavioral interactions rather than the mechanism without KCP conditions in the social networks.

School buildings have suffered disproportionate damage during past and recent earthquakes. For example, during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, many school buildings collapsed, resulting in loss of life. School buildings in many other parts of the world are also susceptible to this type of widespread damage because of inadequate design, detailing, or poor construction quality. The purpose of this paper is to show how these fatal flaws can be mitigated prior to future catastrophe by using good engineering practice to retrofit vulnerable schools.

Conventional and innovative, cost‐effective, and reliable tools are available to prevent damage to schools. It is often necessary to examine a group of buildings or all structures in a locality and develop a comprehensive risk management plan for the vulnerable buildings. As an example, a comprehensive evaluation and retrofit project, under the auspices of the World Bank, is currently under way in Istanbul, Turkey, to address vulnerable school and hospital buildings as discussed in the paper. As part of this effort in Turkey, a guideline that relies on state‐of‐the‐art evaluation and retrofit methods has been developed to assist the local engineers.

Implementation of the program based on the uniform standards developed in the retrofit guidelines, has significantly reduced the seismic risk to schools in Istanbul.

The proposed evaluation and implementation technique can be utilized by governments worldwide to prevent further damage to key infrastructure and save millions of lives.

Innovative retrofits can be used to provide enhanced performance and provide seismic resiliency for cluster of school buildings.

Underrepresented in medicine individuals have historically been discouraged to consider surgical subspecialties and instead encouraged toward primary care fields thus representing less than 2% of the workforce in these areas. In the last 15 years, the Rabb-Venable Excellence in Research program has worked with medical students, residents, and fellows in preparing them to become ophthalmologists, medical researchers, academicians, or private practice. While the Rabb-Venable program centers on expanding the number of ophthalmologists, pipeline programs exist to enhance the representation of URM individuals in other medical specialties to decrease health disparities.

This chapter discusses the Rabb-Venable program, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the sponsorship of the National Medical Association (NMA), has combined a research competition at the annual meeting of the NMA. The Rabb-Venable program is geared toward increasing the number of (URM) in the field of ophthalmology and increasing the number of URM participants in academic medicine. The program has a twofold mission of supporting the development of the clinical specialty of ophthalmology and creating physician researchers through leadership, academic excellence, professionalism, service, and mentorship. Exploration of the different types of eye diseases that disproportionally affect minority groups are identified. In addition the medical students who have been part of the program and are eligible to apply have had an 84% rate of matching in ophthalmology.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the balanced role of internal and external compliance in risk evaluation process of specialized agriculture financing. The authors examine the adaptive behavior of risk managers to determine the role of proposed transformation for risk monitoring (RM) and control process in risk mitigation and avoidance of agriculture credit failure.

A self-administered survey was conducted to collect data from 353 risk-related officers and managers in Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) Pakistan. The authors used a previously tested scale for the main constructs. The descriptive analyses were used to gauge the model capacity for determining the strength of proposed risk patterns in agriculture risk management.

The results reveal that risk evaluation process in ZTBL is reasonably efficient in mitigating risks. Given the sensitive nature of farm credit, there is a need of fundamental reforms in risk policy manuals in line with central bank’s agriculture prudential regulations and Basel-III standards. The results fully support H1 and H2, while H3 is partially validated. The result patterns indicate serious issues in risk evaluation process in agriculture finance that is causing higher delinquency in farm credit.

Based on highlighted issues, the authors recommend valuable guidelines in the RM review system for agriculture financing products at ZTBL.

The authors propose remodeling of agriculture risk management and offer valuable insights to the agriculture financial regulators and government in taking policy initiatives in the pre-and-post agriculture risk evaluation process. The proposed model enables RM process to improve farm credit delinquency, particularly in ZTBL and other agriculture banking networks in commercial banks.

This is the first study to empirically investigate RM evaluation process in agriculture risk management of ZTBL in Pakistan, thus, offers new horizon of farm credit regulatory compliance in agricultural sector of Pakistan.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether there are differences in beginning doctoral students’ perceptions of the disciplinary knowledge required to be successful in doctoral education and identify pre-doctoral characteristics and experiences that explain these differences.

This study relied on survey data of first-year PhD students enrolled at a large, research-intensive university. Survey responses were matched to institutional information, missing data were imputed and responses were weighted to account for groups’ differential probabilities of being included in the analytical sample. The authors used regression analysis to examine the relationship between students’ background characteristics, anticipatory socialization experiences, academic performance and perceived levels of disciplinary knowledge.

The study findings indicated significant differences in doctoral students’ perceived levels of disciplinary knowledge. Students who identify as female or URM had significantly lower levels of perceived disciplinary knowledge than students who identify as male or non-URM. Moreover, several anticipatory socialization experiences were significantly and positively related to perceived disciplinary knowledge.

While there is evidence that doctoral students start graduate school with varying identities and experiences, little is known about how students perceive their abilities and knowledge. This study reported that students differ in their self-assessment of disciplinary knowledge as they embark on doctoral work with implications for academic identity development and student success.

A lot is known about systemic barriers to broadening participation (BP) in STEM. Empirical research has demonstrated the existence and impact of implicit bias, stereotype threat, and micro-aggressions on a sense of belonging, organizational productivity and leadership opportunities. We also know that achieving greater participation of women and faculty of color in the STEM disciplines is complicated and depends on altering complex and multi-layered interactions between activities and actors. Further, because researcher and institutional goals vary as a function of target population and context, generalizable models can struggle in the face of larger BP efforts. Through the authors experience as an NSF ADVANCE-IT awardee, the authors believe that a dynamic, multi-scaled and organizational level approach is required to reflect the reciprocal dialogue among research questions, best practices, tailored applications and quantifiable goals. The authors describe several examples of research, programming activities and program evaluation that illustrate this approach. In particular, the authors describe both the programming successes and challenges, with the aim of helping others to avoid common mistakes by articulating very broad and, the authors’ hope, generalizable “lessons learned.” The paper aims to discuss these issues.

To better understand the barriers for women in STEM, the authors utilized an iterative methodology. Specifically, the authors conducted a social network analysis, an exit survey of departed faculty, longitudinal analysis of career trajectories and research productivity, and a survey on the interaction between values and climate.

The analyses suggest three strategies better retain women in STEM: improve women’s professional networks; re-aling policy documents and departmental practices to better reflect faculty values; and improve departmental climate.

The pay-off for using this more complex research approach to triangulate onto specific challenges is that the interventions are more likely to be successful, with a longer-lasting impact.

With continuous institutional research, metric refinement, and program evaluation the authors are better able to develop targeted programming, policy reform, and changes in institutional practice. The interventions should result in permanent institutional and systemic change by integrating multi-method qualitative and quantitative research into BP practices, which the authors couple with longitudinal analysis that can quantify success of the authors’ efforts.