This study investigates the relationship between hydrological processes, watershed management, and road infrastructure resilience, focusing on the impact of flooding on roads intersecting with streams in River Nile State, Sudan. Situated between 16.5° N to 18.5° N latitude and 33° E to 34° E longitude, this region faces significant flooding challenges that threaten its ecological and economic stability. Using precise Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and advanced hydrological modeling, the research aims to identify optimal flood mitigation solutions, such as overpass bridges. The study quantifies the total road length in the area at 3572.279 km, with stream orders distributed as follows: First Order at 2276.79 km (50.7%), Second Order at 521.48 km (11.6%), Third Order at 331.26 km (7.4%), and Fourth Order at 1359.92 km (30.3%). Approximately 27% (12 out of 45) of the identified road flooding points were situated within third- and fourth-order streams, mainly along the Atbara-Shendi Road and near Al-Abidiya and Merowe. Blockages varied in distance, with the longest at 256 m in Al-Abidiya, and included additional measurements of 88, 49, 112, 106, 66, 500, and 142 m. Some locations experienced partial flood damage despite having water culverts at 7 of these points, indicating possible design flaws or insufficient hydrological analysis during construction. The findings suggest that enhanced scrutiny, potentially using high-resolution DEMs, is essential for better vulnerability assessment and management. The study proposes tailored solutions to protect infrastructure, promoting sustainability and environmental stewardship.
Effective small and medium enterprise (SME) leadership demands creative solutions to ensure organisations survive and thrive during the turbulent times that COVID-19 continues to bring. This paper explores how SME leaders (in micro and small organisations) prioritise and access the skills and development needed to provide effective and sustainable leadership to organisations, focusing on the role of resilience and the benefits it provides. Participants were selected through purposive and snowballing sampling. Online surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted and provided qualitative data that contributes to an understanding of the role of resilience and the view of participants as to what is needed to effectively respond to a dynamic environment. Evidence shows that SME leaders prioritise learning and development opportunities that provide demonstrable benefits throughout the organisation. Building business resilience remains a fuzzy concept; however, viewing resilience as a multi-level construct offers benefits when designing and delivering development opportunities. It has been found that networking, partnerships, and relationship building promote resilience and may offer a solution to how to embed resilience building into development opportunities that SME leaders value and wish to engage with. This article contributes by illustrating and exploring leadership development within SMEs during a period of unexpected and untested uncertainty. The pandemic caused major shock waves within business communities, and SMEs were significantly affected. The research is limited in that it is expected to be a once-in-a lifetime event, and as such conditions may not be replicable, learning opportunities for other ‘shock’ events are possible. The findings of this paper have relevance to practice in that, while the event may be one-off, shocks to the business environment are not.
In Costa Rica, there is no explicit recommendation from the competent authorities for the use of a specific phantom, so experts must explore what suppliers offer, among which the Normi Mam Digital phantom from PTW stands out. This article presents the results of the dosimetry and image quality control applied to the Normi Mam Digital phantom to validate it as equipment that complies with the recommendations of the Human Health Series No. 17. The results obtained were satisfactory, proving that the equipment complies with the tolerances recommended by international health bodies.
The main objective of this article is to analyze the relationship between increases in freight costs and inflation in the markets due to the increases reflected in the prices of the products in some economies in destination ports such as the United States, Europe, Japan, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand and South Korea. We use fractionally integrated methods and Granger causality test to calculate the correlation between these indicators. The results indicate that, after a significant drop in inflation in 2020, probably due to the confinement caused by the pandemic, the increases observed in inflation and freight costs are expected to be transitory given their stationary behavior. We also find a close correlation between both indicators in Europe, the United States and South Africa.
Gender inequality is a structural social problem, associated with history, culture, education, religion and politics, this difficulty occurs in all social institutions due to the heterogeneity of the structure in the sexual division of labor, socioeconomic inequality, inclusion and inequity in participation in the public space between men and women. Public policies and attitudes towards gender equality in Peruvian university students were analyzed according to socio-academic variables. A descriptive-comparative study, with a quantitative approach, and not experimental cross-sectional, involved 776 university students from a public and a private university in Peru, intentionally selected. Adaptive attitudes (57.9%) were found to tend to be sexist; Likewise, in the study dimensions, the same trend was found in the sociocultural and relational levels, while in the personal dimension students develop sexist attitudes (62.4%). It is concluded, attitudes towards gender equality are sexist reproduction that is influenced by the sociocultural environment of the family, this situation occurs to a greater extent in men, while female students present attitudes of equality in greater intensity to seek equity in the distribution of roles.
The purpose of this work is to present the model of a Parabolic Trough Solar Collector (PTC) using the Finite Element Method to predict the thermal behavior of the working fluid along the collector receiver tube. The thermal efficiency is estimated based on the governing equations involved in the heat transfer processes. To validate the model results, a thermal simulation of the fluid was performed using Solidworks software. The maximum error obtained from the comparison of the modeling with the simulation was 7.6% at a flow rate of 1 L/min. According to the results obtained from the statistical errors, the method can effectively predict the fluid temperature at high flow rates. The developed model can be useful as a design tool, in the optimization of the time spent in the simulations generated by the software and in the minimization of the manufacturing costs related to Parabolic Trough Solar Collectors.
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