ALBERT

Description: Many older adults face challenges that prevent them from accomplishing common daily activities such as moving around, home maintenance, and leisure activities. There is still a need to examine and understand how environmental factors impact daily participation across gender. This study sought to make a qualitative comparison of gender differences regarding environmental barriers to participation in daily occupations from the perspectives of older adults who live alone in Puerto Rico. Twenty-six Hispanic older adults, 70 years or older participated in this study. We used a descriptive qualitative research design in which researchers administered an in-depth interview to each participant. The results elucidated that women were more likely than men to experience restricted participation due to lack of accessibility of the built environment and transportation systems. The findings could help with the development of tailored, occupation-based, preventive interventions that address gender specific environmental barriers and promote greater participation among both women and men. Further research is required to explore whether these environmental barriers to occupational participation remain consistent across living situations, socioeconomic status and ethnicity.

Description: Cytotoxicity of titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin films on Chinese hamster ovary (CHO-K1) cells was evaluated after 24, 48 and 72 h of culture. The TiO2 thin films were deposited using direct current magnetron sputtering. These films were post-deposition annealed at different temperatures (300, 500 and 800 °C) toward the anatase to rutile phase transformation. The root-mean-square (RMS) surface roughness of TiO2 films went from 2.8 to 8.08 nm when the annealing temperature was increased from 300 to 800 °C. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) results showed that the TiO2 films’ thickness values fell within the nanometer range (290–310 nm). Based on the results of the tetrazolium dye and trypan blue assays, we found that TiO2 thin films showed no cytotoxicity after the aforementioned culture times at which cell viability was greater than 98%. Independently of the annealing temperature of the TiO2 thin films, the number of CHO-K1 cells on the control substrate and on all TiO2 thin films was greater after 48 or 72 h than it was after 24 h; the highest cell survival rate was observed in TiO2 films annealed at 800 °C. These results indicate that TiO2 thin films do not affect mitochondrial function and proliferation of CHO-K1 cells, and back up the use of TiO2 thin films in biomedical science.

Description: The cement industry has the potential to become a major consumer of recycled waste materials that are transformed and recycled in various forms as aggregates and pozzolanic materials. These recycled waste materials would otherwise have been dumped in landfill sites, leaving hazardous elements to break down and contaminate the environment. There are several approaches for the reuse of these waste products, especially in relation to clay minerals that can induce pozzolanic reactions of special interest in the cement industry. In the present paper, scientific aspects are discussed in relation to several inert coal-mining wastes and their recycling as alternative sources of future eco-efficient pozzolans, based on activated phyllosilicates. The presence of kaolinite in this waste indicates that thermal treatment at 600 °C for 2 h transformed these minerals into a highly reactive metakaolinite over the first seven days of the pozzolanic reaction. Moreover, high contents of metakaolinite, together with silica and alumina sheet structures, assisted the appearance of layered double hydroxides through metastable phases, forming stratlingite throughout the main phase of the pozzolanic reaction after 28 days (as recommended by the European Standard) as the reaction proceeded.

Description: It is shown in this article that the current European legislation makes the future progress of smart cities critically dependent on the advancement of the green economy and consequently on the further development of energy efficiency and of renewable energy sources. However, the lack of a clear legal framework capable of transforming the current pledges into binding rules at national level can jeopardize the establishment of a more direct and profitable link between the extensive European legislation on energy and environment, and the harmonious and efficient development of smart cities in Europe.

Description: In 2013, the Spanish government created two new taxes on used nuclear fuel. This article aims to present the results of an economic study carried out to compare the costs of long-term storage of used nuclear fuel –open cycle strategy–, with the cost of the strategy of reprocessing and recycling used fuel– closed cycle strategy– taking into account the impact of the new taxes on the global cost of the fuel cycle. The results show that the costs of open-cycle and closed-cycle spent fuel management, evaluated in Spain after the introduction of the taxes, are sufficiently similar (within the bounds of uncertainty), that the choice between both is predicated on other than purely economic criteria.

Description: This paper deals with the power conversion system architectures to interface a stationary electrochemical storage installation with the network. Theoretical justifications about the conversion system layouts and control, used for actual Italian installations, are given. This paper aims at giving the power energy society an overview of actual possibilities of static conversion of d.c. battery sources.

Description: This paper presents a new metric for describing the sustainability improvements achieved, relative to the company’s initial situation, after implementing a lean and green manufacturing system. The final value of this metric is identified as the Overall Environmental Equipment Effectiveness (OEEE), which is used to analyze the evolution between two identified states of the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and the sustainability together, and references, globally and individually, the production steps. The OEE is a known measure of equipment utilization, which includes the availability, quality and performance of each production step, In addition to these factors, the OEEE incorporates the concept of sustainability based on the calculated environmental impact of the complete product life cycle. Action research based on the different manufacturing processes of a tube fabrication company is conducted to assess the potential impact of this new indicator. The case study demonstrates the compatibility between green and lean manufacturing, using a common metric. The OEEE allows sustainability to be integrated into business decisions, and compares the environmental impact of two states, by identifying the improvements undertaken within the company’s processes.

Description: Sensors, Vol. 18, Pages 2429: A PUF- and Biometric-Based Lightweight Hardware Solution to Increase Security at Sensor Nodes Sensors doi: 10.3390/s18082429 Authors: Rosario Arjona Miguel Ángel Prada-Delgado Javier Arcenegui Iluminada Baturone Security is essential in sensor nodes which acquire and transmit sensitive data. However, the constraints of processing, memory and power consumption are very high in these nodes. Cryptographic algorithms based on symmetric key are very suitable for them. The drawback is that secure storage of secret keys is required. In this work, a low-cost solution is presented to obfuscate secret keys with Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs), which exploit the hardware identity of the node. In addition, a lightweight fingerprint recognition solution is proposed, which can be implemented in low-cost sensor nodes. Since biometric data of individuals are sensitive, they are also obfuscated with PUFs. Both solutions allow authenticating the origin of the sensed data with a proposed dual-factor authentication protocol. One factor is the unique physical identity of the trusted sensor node that measures them. The other factor is the physical presence of the legitimate individual in charge of authorizing their transmission. Experimental results are included to prove how the proposed PUF-based solution can be implemented with the SRAMs of commercial Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) chips which belong to the communication module of the sensor node. Implementation results show how the proposed fingerprint recognition based on the novel texture-based feature named QFingerMap16 (QFM) can be implemented fully inside a low-cost sensor node. Robustness, security and privacy issues at the proposed sensor nodes are discussed and analyzed with experimental results from PUFs and fingerprints taken from public and standard databases.

Description: Water, Vol. 10, Pages 1037: Multivariate and Spatial Analysis of Physicochemical Parameters in an Irrigation District, Chihuahua, Mexico Water doi: 10.3390/w10081037 Authors: Jesús Alejandro Prieto-Amparán Beatriz Adriana Rocha-Gutiérrez María de Lourdes Ballinas-Casarrubias María Cecilia Valles-Aragón María del Rosario Peralta-Pérez Alfredo Pinedo-Alvarez Water quality is relevant due to the complexity of the interaction of physicochemical and biological parameters. The Irrigation District 005 (ID005) is one of the most important agricultural region in Chihuahua, México; for that reason, it was proposed to investigate the water quality of the site. Water samples were collected in two periods: Summer (S1) and Fall (S2). The samples were taken from 65 wells in S1, and 54 wells in S2. Physicochemical parameters (PhP) such as Arsenic (As), Temperature, Electrical Conductivity (EC), Oxide Reduction Potential (ORP), Hardness, pH, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), and Turbidity were analyzed. The data were subjected to statistical principal component analysis (PCA), cluster analysis (CA) and spatial variability tests. In both seasons, the TDS exceeded the Mexican maximum permissible level (MPL) (35% S1, 39% S2). Turbidity exceeded the MPL in S1 (29%) and in S2 (12%). Arsenic was above the MPL for water of agricultural use in 9% (S1) and 13% (S2) of the wells. The PCA results suggested that most variations in water quality in S1 were due to As, pH and Temperature, followed by EC, TDS and Hardness; while in S2 to EC, TDS and Hardness, followed by As and pH.

Description: Energies, Vol. 11, Pages 2087: Italian Experience on Electrical Storage Ageing for Primary Frequency Regulation Energies doi: 10.3390/en11082087 Authors: Roberto Benato Sebastian Dambone Sessa Maura Musio Francesco Palone Rosario Maria Polito The paper describes the results of different types of ageing tests performed by Terna (the Italian Transmission System Operator) applied to several electrochemical technologies, namely lithium-based and sodium-nickel chloride-based technologies. In particular, the tested lithium-based technologies exploit a graphite-based anode and the following cathode electrochemistries: lithium iron phosphate, lithium nickel cobalt aluminium, lithium nickel cobalt manganese, and lithium titanate. These tests have been performed in the storage labs located in Sardinia (Codrongianos) and Sicily (Ciminna). The aim of the storage labs is intended to give the electrical grid ancillary services, for example, primary frequency regulation, secondary frequency regulation, voltage regulation, synthetic rotational inertia provision, and many more. For the primary frequency regulation service, the ageing of the batteries is difficult to foresee as the ageing tests are not standardized. The authors proposed some novel cycle types, which showed that, in several cases, the frequency regulation cycle ages the batteries much more than the standard cycle. The standard cycle definition has been adopted in the paper to identify a battery cycle test that was carried out to uniformly compare and rank the different technologies. Moreover, sodium-nickel chloride batteries are unaffected by the types of cycle and have a negligible ageing. In addition, lithium manganese oxide and lithium titanate batteries show very good behaviour with a slight degradation of the dischargeable energy, irrespectively of the type of cycle. Inversely, lithium nickel cobalt aluminium technology shows a considerable ageing and a strong dependence on the cycle types. Even if the theoretical explanations of such aging behaviours need time to be understood and expounded, the authors are convinced that the scientific community should become aware of these experimental results.