In the South African government sector, public procurement is a strategic mechanism through which the government could be able to achieve the mandatory socioeconomic objectives.To this extent, the government procures goods and services from the private sector which can be estimated around eight hundred billion rand annually.Although there are numer
This study presents an application of artificial neural network (ANN) and Bayesian network (BN) for evaluation of jamming risk of the shielded tunnel boring machines (TBMs) in adverse ground conditions such as squeezing grounds.The analysis is based on database of tunneling cases by numerical modeling to evaluate the ground convergence and possibil
The heat losses from pre-insulated double-pipe district heating (DH) systems buried in a homogeneous soil are studied numerically.The study is conducted using the diameter of the pipes and their distance, the size of the insulation, the thermal conductivity ratio between the insulation and the soil, as well as the burial depth of the double-pipe sy
While the historical novel Purse Charms is a product of European Romanticism, the first Italian historical novel expresses the critical awareness of its origin against the dark background of the Seicento.For the historical and political imagination of the Italian Romanticism, the Seicento represents the Middle Age of modernity, namely the obscurity
Abstract Background Mechanical strength is a crucial agronomic trait in rice (Oryza sativa), and brittle mutants are thought suitable materials to investigate the mechanism of cell wall formation.So far, almost all brittle mutants are recessive, and most of them are defected in multiple Handlebar Front morphologies and/or grain yield, limiting thei