ALBERT

Description: The difference in heating or cooling to power ratio between required demands for district networks and the proposed tri-generation system is the most challenging issue of the system configuration and design. In this work, an adjustable, novel tri-generation system driven by geothermal resources is proposed to supply the thermal energies of a specific district network depending on ambient temperature in Germany. The tri-generation system is a combination of a modified absorption refrigeration cycle and a Kalina cycle using NH3-H2O mixture as a working fluid for the whole tri-generation system. A sensitive analysis of off-design conditions is carried out to study the effect of operational parameters on the system performances prior to optimizing its performance. The simulation show that the system is able to cover required heating and cooling demands. The optimization is applied considering the maximum exergy efficiency (scenario 1) and minimum total exergy destruction rate (scenario 2). The optimization results show that the maximum mean exergy efficiency in scenario 1 is achieved as 44.67% at the expense of 14.52% increase in the total exergy destruction rate in scenario 2. The minimum mean total exergy destruction rate in scenario 2 is calculated as 2980 kW at the expense of 8.32% decrease in the exergy efficiency in scenario 1.

Description: Fluoride is a halogen found in soil and water from natural and anthropogenic sources. Foods, such as cereals, fruits, and vegetables, among others, absorb and accumulate fluoride. High intakes of this element produce toxic effects such as dental or skeletal fluorosis. Fluoride content was determined in a total of 144 samples from different food groups (cereals and derivatives, fruits, tree nuts, dry fruits, mushrooms, vegetables, and legumes) using selective fluoride ion potentiometry. The fluoride concentration stood out in almonds (3.70 ± 0.96 mg/kg), walnuts (3.53 ± 0.62 mg/kg), bread (2.54 ± 0.85 mg/kg), and rice (2.28 ± 0.93 mg/kg). Consumption of 236 g/day of bread or 263 g/day of rice represents 100% of the recommended daily intake (DRI) set at 0.6 mg/day for children aged 1–3 years. In the case of rice consumption by children of these ages, it is recommended to use bottled water for rice preparation. The consumption of the analyzed foods by teenagers and adults does not pose a health risk.

Description: The study shows an analysis of a 7-year data set measuring Ultraviolet-B (UVB) irradiance values and ultraviolet index TABLEUVI) values derived from ground-based broadband irradiance measurements, satellite-derived total ozone, and UVB solar irradiance recorded in Valladolid (Central Spain). Ultraviolet-B (UVB) solar irradiance measurements in the range (280–315 nm) carried out during the period 2013–2019 at a continental Mediterranean solar station, located in Valladolid (Spain), were analyzed. UVB data recorded using a YES UVB-1 pyranometer were used to estimate erythemal irradiance, ultraviolet erythemal irradiance (UVER), UVI, cumulative dose, and sun protection. Hourly UVER data in January (minimum values) and June (maximum values) were analyzed as an average year for the measurement station. Differences between UVI values at solar noon and the maximum daily value were minimal. It was found that on certain summer days, maximum daily UVI and SED (cumulative daily dose) could be over 12 and 60, respectively. The cumulative dose on the horizontal surface was calculated at the station for different skin types. It was observed that over 45% of the annual dose is received in summer, about 30% in spring, over 15% in autumn, and less than 10% in winter. In addition, the relationship between the maximum daily UVI and the annual accumulated dose in SEDs was studied to provide information on sun protection under low UVI conditions.

Description: Accurately forecasting how crowds of people are distributed in urban areas during daily activities is of key importance for the smart city vision and related applications. In this work we forecast the crowd density and distribution in an urban area by analyzing an aggregated mobile phone dataset. By comparing the forecasting performance of statistical and deep learning methods on the aggregated mobile data we show that each class of methods has its advantages and disadvantages depending on the forecasting scenario. However, for our time-series forecasting problem, deep learning methods are preferable when it comes to simplicity and immediacy of use, since they do not require a time-consuming model selection for each different cell. Deep learning approaches are also appropriate when aiming to reduce the maximum forecasting error. Statistical methods instead show their superiority in providing more precise forecasting results, but they require data domain knowledge and computationally expensive techniques in order to select the best parameters.

Description: In the present work, an assessment of the corrosion behavior of mild steel in the presence of an organic corrosion inhibitor loaded into hybrid composite materials is performed. Hybrid organic–inorganic nanocontainers based on cerium and titanium oxides were fabricated via a combination of radical polymerization together with the coprecipitation method and sol-gel technique. The corrosion inhibition role of these hybrid materials loaded with an inhibitor is considered. A set of characterization assays addressing morphology, composition and structural aspects of the exposed steels is illustrated, along with electrochemical evaluations. The results reveal enhanced stimuli responsive anticorrosion ability of the produced hybrid materials. Furthermore, upon corrosion, new compounds are formed onto the exposed areas of the treated metals. The conducted experiments shed light on the corrosion mechanisms for steel alloys as well as the actuation of the fabricated composite materials, paving the way for future developments in this area.

Description: The importance of a reliable blade root connection has grown due to the higher-gravity-induced edgewise loads on the blade root that resulted from the recent increased size and weight of a wind turbine rotor blade. To avoid the loosening of a bolt joint connection or even consecutive blade failures, the stress concentration factor (SCF) at the bolt thread root that is sensitive to fatigue should be understood comprehensively. In this work, two-dimensional and three-dimensional finite element (FE) analysis methods were used to determine the SCF at the bolt threads both between an insert and a M42 bolt used for a large offshore blade, and between a M42 bolt and a nut. The effect of various geometric parameters on the SCF were also investigated, which included shank diameter, nut height, nut type, and relief cone. Results showed that the decreased diameter of a M42 bolt shank diameter was the dominant design driver in reducing the stress concentration factor by 40%, from 3.94 to 2.32. The round nut type was also a recommended factor to be implemented to connect bolts and inner pitch bearing with an additional 10% SCF reduction. The relief cones applied to bolt threads and insert threads also contributed to the reduction of SCF to 2.01, a 49% reduction in total. This work not only provides guidelines by which to choose the proper geometry of the bolt and nut for a large blade, but also could be beneficial in designing bolted joint connections of segment or modular blades.

Description: Acrylic bone cement (ABC) is one of the most used materials in orthopedic surgery, mainly for the fixation of orthopedic implants to the bone. However, ABCs usually present lack of biological activity and osseointegration capacity that leads to loosening of the prosthesis. This work reports the effect of introducing graphene oxide (GO) and chitosan (CS), separately or together, in the ABC formulation on setting performance, mechanical behavior, and biological properties. Introduction of both CS and GO to the ABC decreased the maximum temperature by 21% and increased the antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli by 87%, while introduction of only CS decreased bending strength by 32%. The results of cell viability and cell adhesion tests showed in vitro biocompatibility. The in vivo response was investigated using both subdermal and bone parietal implantations in Wistar rats. Modified ABCs showed absence of immune response, as confirmed by a normal inflammatory response in Wistar rat subdermal implantation. The results of the parietal bone implantation showed that the addition of CS and GO together allowed a near total healing bone–cement interface, as observed in the micrographic analysis. The overall results support the great potential of the modified ABCs for application in orthopedic surgery mainly in those cases where osseointegration is required.

Description: The phytochemical characteristic analysis of a group of 30 haskap berry genotypes was carried out bearing in mind the concern for the consumption of food with high nutraceutical value that helps maintain good health. Phytochemical fruit composition and antioxidant activity were assessed by the Folin–Ciocalteau, spectrophotometric, DPPH (1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl) as well as ABTS (2,2′-azino-bis(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) method. Evaluation of antioxidant activity was referred to as the Trolox equivalent. The observed differences in the content of phenolics, flavonoids, vitamin C and antioxidant activity allowed us to select genotypes which, due to the high level of the analyzed compounds, are particularly recommended in everyone’s diet. In addition, the analysis of the prospects of increasing the analyzed phytochemical properties, estimated by parameters such as heritability and genetic progress, indicates the effectiveness of breeding in relation to each of the analyzed traits. The results of the presented research can be used in the implementation of future breeding programs for this valuable species.

Description: The purpose of this study was to analyze the contribution of anthropometric and strength determinants of 2000 m ergometer performance in traditional rowing. Nineteen rowers competing at national level participated in this study. Anthropometric characteristics, vertical jumps and bench pull tests were assessed to determine conditional factors, whereas the 2000 m test was used to set rowing performance. Pearson correlation coefficient, linear stepwise and allometric regression analyses were used to predict rowing performance (R2 〉 50%). Height, body mass and body muscle correlated with rowing performance in male and female rowers. Similarly, power output for squat jump and countermovement jump power correlated with performance. Finally, mean propulsive velocity, mean power and maximum power in bench pull also correlated with the test. Stepwise multiple regression analysis identified body mass (R2 = 0.69, p 〈 0.001) and mean propulsive velocity in bench pull (R2 = 0.76, p 〈 0.001) for male rowers and body muscle (R2 = 0.89, p = 0.002) and maximum power in bench pull (R2 = 0.62, p = 0.036) for female rowers as the best predictors of rowing performance. These results determine the relevance of anthropometric characteristics and, in contrast to Olympic rowing, support the greatest importance of upper body power in traditional rowing training.

Description: Self-tapping screws (STSs) can be efficiently used in various fastening solutions for timber constructions and are notoriously able to offer high stiffness and load-carrying capacity, compared to other timber-to-timber composite (TTC) joint typologies. The geometrical and mechanical characterization of TTC joints, however, is often hard and uncertain, due to a combination of various influencing parameters and mechanical aspects. Among others, the effects of friction phenomena between the system components and their reciprocal interaction under the imposed design loads can remarkably influence the final estimates on structural capacity, in the same way of possible variations in the boundary conditions. The use of Finite Element (FE) numerical models is well-known to represent a robust tool and a valid alternative to costly and time consuming experiments and allows one to further explore the selected load-bearing components at a more refined level. Based on previous research efforts, this paper presents an extended FE investigation based on full three-dimensional (3D) brick models and surface-based cohesive zone modelling (CZM) techniques. The attention is focused on the mechanical characterization of small-scale TTC specimens with inclined STSs having variable configurations, under a standard push-out (PO) setup. Based on experimental data and analytical models of literature, an extended parametric investigation is presented and correlation formulae are proposed for the analysis of maximum resistance and stiffness variations. The attention is then focused on the load-bearing role of the steel screws, as an active component of TTC joints, based on the analysis of sustained resultant force contributions. The sensitivity of PO numerical estimates to few key input parameters of technical interest, including boundaries, friction and basic damage parameters, is thus discussed in the paper.

Description: Energy storage pile foundations are being developed for storing renewable energy by utilizing compressed air energy storage technology. Previous studies on isolated piles indicate that compressed air can result in pressure and temperature fluctuations in the pile, which can further affect safety of the pile foundation. Meanwhile, the temperature changes and distributions for the pile and surrounding soil also are influenced by adjacent piles in typical group pile constructions. Therefore, dynamic thermal transfer simulations were conducted in this paper to investigate the temperature changes and distributions in the concrete pile and surrounding soil for group pile construction. The main parameter in this study is the spacing of the piles. The analysis results show that the group pile effect significantly increases the temperature up to more than 100 °C depending on the location and changes its distribution in both concrete and soil due to the heat transferred from the adjacent piles. The final stabilized temperature can be as high as 120 °C in the concrete pile and 110 °C in the soil after numerous loading cycles, which is about 4 times higher than typical thermo-active energy pile applications. Thus, it is important to include the group pile effect for design and analysis of the energy storage pile foundation.

Description: Cyanobacteria, green algae and diatoms are significant factors in the biodeterioration of stone cultural heritage sites, and specifically fountain monuments, due to the constant presence of water. In this study, samples were taken from different fountains in the Alhambra and Generalife, which are among the Spanish monuments of greatest historical and artistic value and which together were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1984. The aim was to identify which species of colonising microalgae are most frequent and to obtain monoalgal cultures from them. From a conservation point of view, it is interesting to identify which algae are growing in these fountains and how they behave in order to develop new methods to control their growth. The most abundant groups of algae in our samples were green algae and cyanobacteria. The most common genera in the former group were Bracteacoccus, Chlorosarcina, Chlorosarcinopsis, Apatococcus and Klebsormidium. As for cyanobacteria, the most abundant genera were Phormidium, Calothrix, Leptolyngbya, Chamaesiphon, Pleurocapsa and Chlorogloea. Using our collected samples, 10 genera of green algae and 13 genera of cyanobacteria were isolated, thereby constituting the base samples for the creation of a reference collection of living algae from the Alhambra and Generalife contexts, which can be used in subsequent studies to develop new types of treatment against biodeterioration.

Description: Multispeed transmissions are helpful for improvement of the economy and drivability of electric vehicles (EVs). In this paper, we propose a two-speed transmission based on dual planetary gear mechanism, in which shifts are realized by torque transfer between two brakes located on ring gears. To synthesize the dynamic and economic performances of the vehicle, a multiobjective optimization problem is constructed for gear ratio optimization and Pareto-optimal solutions of gear ratio combinations are obtained by Nondominated sorting genetic algorithm-II (NSGA-II). In particular, the minimum electric energy consumption of the EV is calculated with a fast Dynamic Programming (DP) in each iteration. Following this, a constant-output-torque control (COTC) scheme is adopted for the torque phase and inertia phase of gearshift process to ensure constant output torque on the wheel. To enhance transient responses, the feedforward–feedback controller structure is applied and a disturbance observer is integrated to improve robustness. Simulation results demonstrate that the two-speed transmission has much better performance in terms of acceleration time and energy economy compared to the fixed-ratio transmission, and the proposed gearshift control method is able to achieve fast and smooth gear shift robustly while maintaining constant output torque.

Description: The aim of the present paper is twofold. Firstly, to assess the absorbed dose in small lesions using Monte Carlo calculations in a scenario of intratumoral injection of 90Y (e.g., percutaneous ablation). Secondly, to derive a practical analytical formula for the calculation of the absorbed dose that incorporates the absorbed fractions for 90Y. The absorbed dose per unit administered activity was assessed using Monte Carlo calculations in spheres of different size (diameter 0.5–20 cm). The spheres are representative of tumor regions and are assumed to be uniformly filled with 90Y. Monte Carlo results were compared with the macrodosimetric approach used for dose calculation in liver radioembolization. The results of this analysis indicate that the use of the analytic model provides dose overestimates below 10% for lesions with diameter larger than approximately 2 cm. However, for lesions smaller than 2 cm the analytic model is likely to deviate significantly (〉10%) from Monte Carlo results, providing dose overestimations larger than 50% for lesions of 0.5 cm diameter. In this paper an analytical formula derived from MC calculations that incorporates the absorbed fractions for 90Y is proposed. In a scenario of intratumoral injection of microspheres, the proposed equation can be usefully employed in the treatment planning of spherical lesions of small size (down to 0.5 cm diameter) providing dose estimates in close agreement with Monte Carlo calculations (maximum deviation below 0.5%).

Description: At present, there is no clear understanding of the influence of differences in soil mineral composition, particle size grading, and hydraulic paths on the shear strength of unsaturated soil, and the related strength models are not applicable. The shear strength characteristics of different saturation specimens under different hydraulic paths were studied on two granite weathered soils. The experimental results show that the shear strength index of the prepared specimen is “arched” with the increase of saturation, and the dehydration specimen decreases linearly with the saturation. As considering the cementation of free oxides in soils and the interaction among soil particles at different saturations, it is assumed that there are three different contact modes among soil particles: direct contact, meniscus contact, and cement contact. The difference in contact modes will reflect the different laws of shear strength. A shear strength model capable of distinguishing between the capillary effect and the adsorptive effect was established. The model predicted and verified the shear strength data of granite weathered soil under different hydraulic paths well, and then theoretically explained the evolution law of the shear strength of granite weathering soil under the change of saturation.

Description: Thanks to the use of non-invasive techniques and remote sensing in a 19th century building, it was possible to demonstrate that said building is a lost part of the Cáceres wall. This wall was believed to maintain the straight line from a known section, but remote sensing makes it clear that at that point the wall makes a break creating a door of which there was no record. Once this premise was confirmed, an ideal reconstruction hypothesis was developed. For this, the work base was taken on the data collected in an exhaustive data collection process, which launched millions of control points and facilitated in theorizing the original state of this lost section. The HBIM methodology greatly facilitated the process, and will allow for possible modifications with an IFC file as advances are made in that area. Finally, the research proposes an architectural project path that takes into account the data obtained remotely, and that achieves the inclusion of this part of the city in cultural interest and, of course, in a protected and cataloged area.

Description: Nowadays, the new era of industry 4.0 is forcing manufacturers to develop models and methods for managing the geometric variation of a final product in complex manufacturing environments, such as multistage manufacturing systems. The stream of variation model has been successfully applied to manage product geometric variation in these systems, but there is a lack of research studying its application together with the material and order flow in the system. In this work, which is focused on the production quality paradigm in a model-based system engineering context, a digital prototype is proposed to integrate productivity and part quality based on the stream of variation analysis in multistage assembly systems. The prototype was modelled and simulated with OpenModelica tool exploiting the Modelica language capabilities for multidomain simulations and its synergy with SysML. A case study is presented to validate the potential applicability of the approach. The proposed model and the results show a promising potential for future developments aligned with the production quality paradigm.

Description: The wear rate and dissipation energy during tension–torsion cyclic loading of steel wires with fretting contact in different environmental media were explored in this study. Hysteresis loops of tangential force versus displacement amplitude (Ft-D) and torque versus torsion angle (T-θ), and their dissipation energies were obtained employing the self-made test rig. Morphologies of wear scars of steel wires were observed employing the white light interference surface morphology. The quantitative demonstration of the coefficient of cyclic wear of steel wire was carried out combining polynomial fitting, reconstruction of three-dimensional geometric model of wear scar and Archard’s equation. The results show that Ft-D curves reveal both decreases of the relative slip and dissipation energy in the order: corrosive media, deionized water and air. Increases of contact load and crossing angle caused overall decreases in the relative slip and dissipation energy, while the relative slip and dissipation energy both increased with increasing torsion angle. T-θ curves indicated the largest and smallest dissipation energies in cases of acid solution and deionized water, respectively. Increases of contact load, crossing angle and torsion angle caused increases in relative slip and dissipation energy due to cyclic torsional loading with fretting contact. The wear coefficient in cases of distinct environmental media decreased in this order: air, corrosive media and deionized water. Increases of the contact load, torsion angle and crossing angle all induced increases in the wear coefficient.

Description: Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA) is an integrated clinical process to evaluate frail elderly people in order to create therapy plans that improve their quality and quantity of life. The whole process includes the completion of standardized questionnaires or specific movements, which are performed by the patient and do not necessarily require the presence of a medical expert. With the aim of automatizing these parts of the CGA, we have designed and developed CLARC (smart CLinic Assistant Robot for CGA), a mobile robot able to help the physician to capture and manage data during the CGA procedures, mainly by autonomously conducting a set of predefined evaluation tests. Using CLARC to conduct geriatric tests will reduce the time medical professionals have to spend on purely mechanical tasks, giving them more time to develop individualised care plans for their patients. In fact, ideally, CLARC will perform these tests on its own. In parallel with the effort to correctly address the functional aspects, i.e., the development of the robot tasks, the design of CLARC must also deal with non-functional properties such as the degree of interaction or the performance. We argue that satisfying user preferences can be a good way to improve the acceptance of the robot by the patients. This paper describes the integration into the software architecture of the CLARC robot of the modules that allow these properties to be monitored at run-time, providing information on the quality of its service. Experimental evaluation illustrates that the defined quality of service metrics correctly capture the evolution of the aspects of the robot’s activity and its interaction with the patient covered by the non-functional properties that have been considered.

Description: Conducting polymers are an important class of functional materials that has been widely applied to fabricate electrochemical biosensors, because of their interesting and tunable chemical, electrical, and structural properties. Conducting polymers can also be designed through chemical grafting of functional groups, nanostructured, or associated with other functional materials such as nanoparticles to provide tremendous improvements in sensitivity, selectivity, stability and reproducibility of the biosensor’s response to a variety of bioanalytes. Such biosensors are expected to play a growing and significant role in delivering the diagnostic information and therapy monitoring since they have advantages including their low cost and low detection limit. Therefore, this article starts with the description of electroanalytical methods (potentiometry, amperometry, conductometry, voltammetry, impedometry) used in electrochemical biosensors, and continues with a review of the recent advances in the application of conducting polymers in the recognition of bioanalytes leading to the development of enzyme based biosensors, immunosensors, DNA biosensors, and whole-cell biosensors.

Description: Touchless interaction with electronic devices using gestures is gaining popularity and along with speech-based communication offers their users natural and intuitive control methods. Now, these interaction modes go beyond the entertainment industry and are successfully applied in real-life scenarios such as a car interior. In the paper, we analyse the potential of hand gesture interaction in the vehicle environment by physically challenged drivers. A survey conducted with potential users shows that the knowledge of gesture-based interaction and its practical use by people with disabilities is low. Based on these results we proposed a gesture-based system for vehicle on-board system. It has been developed on the available state-of-the-art solutions and investigated in terms of usability on a group of people with different physical limitations who drive a car on daily basis mostly using steering aid tools. The obtained results are compared with the performance of users without any disabilities.

Description: We propose a novel hybrid approach that fuses traditional computer vision techniques with deep learning models to detect figures and formulas from document images. The proposed approach first fuses the different computer vision based image representations, i.e., color transform, connected component analysis, and distance transform, termed as Fi-Fo image representation. The Fi-Fo image representation is then fed to deep models for further refined representation-learning for detecting figures and formulas from document images. The proposed approach is evaluated on a publicly available ICDAR-2017 Page Object Detection (POD) dataset and its corrected version. It produces the state-of-the-art results for formula and figure detection in document images with an f1-score of 0.954 and 0.922, respectively. Ablation study results reveal that the Fi-Fo image representation helps in achieving superior performance in comparison to raw image representation. Results also establish that the hybrid approach helps deep models to learn more discriminating and refined features.

Description: The aim of the study was to evaluate the use of citrus fiber for the nutritional enrichment and technological improvement of gluten-free bread. A partial replacement of starch in bread formulation was analyzed in terms of the dough’s rheological properties and selected quality parameters of the bread. The results allowed to conclude that the presence of citrus fiber modifies the rheological properties of the dough, causing an increase in storage modulus (G′) and loss modulus (G″) values, as well as zero shear viscosity, accompanied with a decrease in instantaneous compliance (J0) and viscoelastic compliance (J1) to the applied stress, which reflects dough strengthening caused by significantly greater water binding and swelling properties characteristic of this ingredient. The introduction of the citrus fiber to bread formulations caused a significant decrease in bread volume and structure changes in crumb visible in the larger porosity and average pore size. The presence of citrus fiber affected texture, decreasing crumb hardness, springiness, cohesiveness and chewiness in comparison to the control. It could also be observed that the use of citrus fiber results in limited crumb hardening during storage, which indicates that this component could be an effective factor retarding the staling of the gluten-free bread based on starch and hydrocolloids.

Description: In recent years, an increasing interest in geothermal energy has been registered in both the scientific community and industry. The present work aims to analyse the energy performance and the economic viability of an innovative high-efficiency geothermal-driven integrated system for a combined heat and power (CHP) application. The system consists of a heat exchanger (HEX) and a transcritical organic Rankine cycle (ORC) that work in parallel to exploit a high-temperature geothermal source (230 °C) and satisfy the energy demand of a commercial centre located in Southern Italy. The ORC and HEX sub-units can operate at partial load to increase the system flexibility and to properly react to continuous changes in energy request. A lumped model was developed to find the proper operating conditions and to evaluate the energy production on an hourly basis over the whole year. In particular, a multi-variable optimisation was implemented to find the most suitable configuration and a 101.4 kWel ORC was selected while the HEX nominal power was 249.5 kWth. The economic viability of the integrated system was evaluated in terms of net present value and payback period and different operating strategies were compared: thermal-driven, electric-driven, and a mixed strategy. The latter turned out to be the best solution according to both energy and economic criteria, with electric and thermal self-consumptions larger than 90%, with no heat dumping and a payback time close to five years.

Description: The design of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) schemes capable of achieving both high spectral and energy efficiency constitutes a challenge for next-generation wireless networks. MIMO schemes based on generalized spatial modulations (GSM) have been widely considered as a powerful technique to achieve that purpose. In this paper, a multi-user (MU) GSM MIMO system is proposed, which relies on the transmission of precoded symbols from a base station to multiple receivers. The precoder’s design is focused on the removal of the interference between users and allows the application of single-user GSM detection at the receivers, which is accomplished using a low-complexity iterative algorithm. Link level and system level simulations of a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) comprising several radio remote units (RRUs) were run in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed solution. Simulation results show that the proposed GSM MU-MIMO approach can exploit efficiently a large number of antennas deployed at the transmitter. Moreover, it can also provide large gains when compared to conventional MU-MIMO schemes with identical spectral efficiencies. In fact, regarding the simulated C-RAN scenario with perfect channel estimation, system level results showed potential gains of up to 155% and 139% in throughput and coverage, respectively, compared to traditional cellular networks. The introduction of imperfect channel estimation reduces the throughput gain to 125%.

Description: Denoising methods are a highly desired component of signal processing, and they can separate the signal of interest from noise to improve the subsequent signal analyses. In this paper, an advanced denoising method based on a fully convolutional encoder–decoder neural network is proposed. The method simultaneously learns the sparse features in the time–frequency domain, and the mask-related mapping function for signal separation. The results show that the proposed method has an impressive performance on denoising microseismic signals containing various types and intensities of noise. Furthermore, the method works well even when a similar frequency band is shared between the microseismic signals and the noises. The proposed method, compared to the existing methods, significantly improves the signal–noise ratio thanks to minor changes of the microseismic signal (less distortion in the waveform). Additionally, the proposed methods preserve the shape and amplitude characteristics so that it allows better recovery of the real waveform. This method is exceedingly useful for the automatic processing of the microseismic signal. Further, it has excellent potential to be extended to the study of exploration seismology and earthquakes.

Description: In this study, the physical and durability properties of cementitious materials containing stainless steel argon-oxygen decarburization (AOD) slag were investigated by CO2 curing. Three contents (0, 30, 60%) of ordinary Portland cement (OPC) were replaced with AOD slag. Specimens were cured at four CO2 concentrations and three temperatures. The chloride diffusion coefficient, drying shrinkage, compressive strength, and porosity were measured. The drying shrinkage reduction was proportional to CO2 uptake. The chloride diffusion coefficient increased as contents of the AOD slag increased. At 15% CO2 concentration, the diffusion coefficient was similar to that of the OPC regardless of the AOD slag substitution rate. The durability of cementitious materials mixed with AOD slag can be improved by CO2 curing and can be used in construction.

Description: The development of electronic devices with enhanced properties of transparency and conformability is of high interest for the development of novel applications in the field of bioelectronics and biomedical sensing. Here, a fabrication process for all organic Organic Field-Effect Transistors (OFETs) by means of large-area, cost-effective techniques such as inkjet printing and chemical vapor deposition is reported. The fabricated device can operate at low voltages (as high as 4 V) with ideal electronic characteristics, including low threshold voltage, relatively high mobility and low subthreshold voltages. The employment of organic materials such as Parylene C, PEDOT:PSS and 6,13-Bis(triisopropylsilylethynyl)pentacene (TIPS pentacene) helps to obtain highly transparent transistors, with a relative transmittance exceeding 80%. Interestingly enough, the proposed process can be reliably employed for OFET fabrication over different kind of substrates, ranging from transparent, flexible but relatively thick polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates to transparent, 700-nm-thick, compliant Parylene C films. OFETs fabricated on such sub-micrometrical substrates maintain their functionality after being transferred onto complex surfaces, such as human skin and wearable items. To this aim, the electrical and electromechanical stability of proposed devices will be discussed.

Description: The objective of the research is to identify the different factors of Lebanese culture that interfere with weight loss therapy and assist the field of nutrition in homogenising in a standardised manner the protocol of Medical Nutrition Therapy (MNT). The first part of the study is based on a literature review, and, in the second part, quantitative analysis was used. The research was conducted on 514 Lebanese adults via questionnaire. The analysis was performed with the AMOS (Version 22, IBM®, Amonk, NY, USA) statistical tool. For the analysis of correlations, chi-square and non-parametric tests were used. Variables affecting weight loss management were identified with the aid of seven hypotheses using structural equation modelling (SEM). Body shape and Body Mass Index (BMI) were found to be inter-related to cognitive behaviours toward food, lifestyle practices, medical conditions, food and beverages. In parallel, and based on the research results, younger adults, in particular women, have better BMI and look better in terms of body shape. Ageing has a direct impact on weight gain. Older people have a lower activity level, which is more prevalent among women, and they also prefer to eat typical Lebanese food. Habits, such as smoking, drinking alcohol, are directly related to obesity and some medical conditions. Low physical activity influences the problems related to body shape. For further studies, one should also include types of physical activities in terms of intensity and number of hours. This would assist the study in being more specified and credible toward the effect of exercise on weight loss management.

Description: Frequent high-rise building fires have posed serious threats to urban public safety. In this study, real-time travel times extracted from online maps were applied to estimate fire service coverage rates for high-rise buildings. Firstly, the minimum fire apparatus requirement for high-rise building “at least 1 water fire truck and 1 aerial fire truck should arrive at the fire scene of high-rise building within 240 s” was proposed. Then, a dynamic estimation model of fire service coverage rate for high-rise buildings was established. To validate the model, 5146 high-rise buildings, 61 water fire trucks, and 56 aerial fire trucks in Changsha were selected as case studies. The results show that the total effective coverage rate and total average travel time in Changsha are 20.43% and 421.95 s, respectively. There are 10,840 water fire trucks and 6192 aerial fire trucks in China. Based on the average number of water fire trucks and aerial fire trucks per high-rise building, it can be estimated that the total effective coverage rate in China may not exceed 60.00%. Due to limited fire resources and frequent traffic congestion, only partial high-rise buildings can be effectively covered by fire services, whether in Changsha or China.

Description: Accompanied by the development of new energy resources, lithium-ion batteries have been used widely in various fields. Due to the significant influence of system performance, much attention has been paid to the accurate estimation and prediction about health status of lithium-ion batteries. In a battery pack, the structure connection causes sophisticated interaction between cells, or between the cells and the pack. Therefore, the degradation of any cell is the result of the deterioration of conjoint cells, and a rapid degradation speed for any individual cell can lead to the accelerated degradation of others beyond expectation, which is one of the primary reasons why the State of Health and life cannot be calculated precisely. To solve this problem, a novel method based on integrated state information from cells has been proposed to estimate status of packs, considering about the degradation effect that cells contribute to the corresponding pack. Using this method, the interactive relationship was described in the form of a neural network in order to mine the effect from the inter-degradation between cells. It was proven that the novel method had better performance than a method based only on the degradation indicators from battery packs.

Description: As a hard and brittle material, KDP crystal is easily damaged by the irradiation of laser in a laser-driven inertial confinement fusion device due to various factors, which will also affect the quality of subsequent incident laser. Thus, the mechanism of laser-induced damage is essentially helpful for increasing the laser-induced damage threshold and the value of optical crystal elements. The intrinsic damage mechanism of crystal materials under laser irradiation of different pulse duration is reviewed in detail. The process from the initiation to finalization of laser-induced damage has been divided into three stages (i.e., energy deposition, damage initiation, and damage forming) to ensure the understanding of laser-induced damage mechanism. It is clear that defects have a great impact on damage under short-pulse laser irradiation. The burst damage accounts for the majority of whole damage morphology, while the melting pit are more likely to appear under high-fluence laser. The three stages of damage are complementary and the multi-physics coupling technology needs to be fully applied to ensure the intuitive prediction of damage thresholds for various initial forms of KDP crystals. The improved laser-induced damage threshold prediction can provide support for improving the resistance of materials to various types of laser-induced damage.

Description: This work aimed to determine the microbiological, physicochemical, microstructural, and sensorial attributes of chicken meat treated with different pressures of supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) at a low temperature for a short duration. The raw chicken meat was subjected to three pressures: 7.4, 11.4 and 15.4 MPa at 31 °C for 10 min and then stored at 4 °C for seven days. The 11.4 and 15.4 MPa treatments on the zeroth day reduced the microbial load compared to the control and 7.4 MPa treatment. Similarly, the higher pressure resulted in a decrease in the total count of yeast and mold. The SC-CO2 had a lesser effect on the lipid peroxidation, pH, cooking loss, and water holding capacity of the treated chicken meats. Color analysis showed an increase in lightness (L*) and a reduction in redness (a*) on the sample surface. Both texture and color results were within acceptable ranges. SC-CO2 treatment with 11.4 or 15.4 MPa at a low temperature for a short time improve microbiological safety while retaining the quality of chicken meat. These findings can be expanded and applied as an alternative for non-thermal processing of chicken meat.

Description: The ability to maintain postural stability is essential in our daily lives. Relatedly, hemiparetic stroke patients have a very high risk of falls. This study aimed to improve the traditional rehabilitation treatment for stroke patients with hemiparesis by providing a virtual reality (VR) feedback system with modular interactive tiles (MITs) to enhance their postural stability and thus prevent falls. The data collected included pre-test and post-test Berg Balance Scale (BBS) values, and complexity index (CI) values for center of pressure (COP) data based on multiscale entropy (MSE) and multivariate multiscale entropy (MMSE) at the 12-week exercise program. Higher BBS and CI values indicate better postural stability, and the results showed that the exercise program yielded significant improvements in postural stability. The mean pre-test BBS value of 51.67 ± 3.12 increased to 53.83 ± 2.17 (p 〈 0.05), and the mean CI of MMSE value increased by 14.8% (p 〈 0.01). We confirmed that this training program including MITs is beneficial to the rehabilitation of stroke patients. More specifically, the MITs training program positively affected the CI of MMSE values, and the affected result similar to the BBS values of the patients, indicating their improved balance and ability to avoid falls.

Description: Resource optimization is a key concern for Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Cloud Computing, as the recent generation in computing technology of the fourth industrial revolution, has emerged as the main standard of service and resource delivery. As cloud computing has grown into a mature technology and is being rapidly adopted in many HEIs across the world, retaining customers of this innovative technology has become a challenge to the cloud service providers. Current research trends on cloud computing have sought to study the acceptance or adoption of technology; however, little research has been devoted to the continuance use in an organizational setting. To address this gap, this study aims to investigate the antecedents of cloud computing continuance use in HEIs. Hence, drawing on the prior literature in organizational-level continuance, this research established a conceptual model that extends and contextualizes the IS continuance model through the lens of the TOE framework (i.e., technological, organizational, and environmental influences). The results of a pilot study, conducted through a survey with information and communications technology (ICT) decision makers, and based on the proposed conceptual model, indicate that the instrument is both reliable and valid, and so point the way towards further research. The paper closes with a discussion of the research limitations, contribution, and future directions.

Description: Defining the basic determinants of the level of reliability with regards to the use of residential buildings and determining the function of the intensity of their characteristic defects are important issues concerning renovation strategy. The distribution of the exploitation time of residential buildings, the function of their reliability, and the distribution of the defect intensity of examined buildings are interdependent terms. Therefore, it can be assumed that the defect intensity of an object will be higher with an increase in its exploitation time. However, it is neither an increase reflecting the length of the building’s service life nor the value directly proportional to its age. The article presents a model and method of testing the defects and reliability of a representative group of traditional downtown residential buildings, which were erected in Wroclaw, Poland at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. A basic conclusion was drawn regarding the mechanism of damage of residential buildings: for the period of using the facility, in which the time of correct operation until failure has an exponential distribution, the average remaining time of failure-free operation is unchanged at any time. It was confirmed that the tested residential buildings, after a certain period of failure-free operation, fulfil their functions, just like new buildings. The optimal moment of renovation occurs after the end of the second period of operation, before the period of rapid wear. The study of the course of the damage intensity function over time reflects the wear process of a residential building in a representative sample of downtown residential buildings that were erected using traditional methods. Defining the average duration of the correct failure-free operation of an object by the reliability function, which determines the probability with which the correct operation time of an object will be longer than its age, has a practical application in the exploitation of a residential building and its components.

Description: Pollution that originates from automobiles is a concern in the current world, not only because of global warming, but also due to the harmful effects on people’s health and lives. Despite regulations on exhaust gas emissions being applied, minimizing unsuitable driving habits that cause elevated fuel consumption and emissions would achieve further reductions. For that reason, this work proposes a self-organized map (SOM)-based intelligent system in order to provide drivers with eco-driving-intended driving style (DS) recommendations. The development of the DS advisor uses driving data from the Uyanik instrumented car. The system classifies drivers regarding the underlying causes of non-optimal DSs from the eco-driving viewpoint. When compared with other solutions, the main advantage of this approach is the personalization of the recommendations that are provided to motorists, comprising the handling of the pedals and the gearbox, with potential improvements in both fuel consumption and emissions ranging from the 9.5% to the 31.5%, or even higher for drivers that are strongly engaged with the system. It was successfully implemented using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device of the Xilinx ZynQ programmable system-on-a-chip (PSoC) family. This SOM-based system allows for real-time implementation, state-of-the-art timing performances, and low power consumption, which are suitable for developing advanced driving assistance systems (ADASs).

Description: Aminoglycosides (AGs) are broad-spectrum antibiotics used in both human infection and animal medicine. The overuse of AGs causes undesirable residues in food, leading to serious health problems due to food chain accumulation. In recent years, various methods have been developed to determine AGs in food. Among these methods, fluorescent (FL), colorimetric and chemiluminescent (CL) optical methods possess advantages such as their simple instrumentation, low cost, simple operation, feasibility of realizing visualization, and smartphone imaging. This mini-review summarizes optical assays for the detection of AGs in food developed in recent years. The detection principles for different categories are discussed. Then, the amplification techniques for the ultrasensitive detection of AGs are introduced. We also discuss multiplex methods for the simultaneous detection of AGs. Finally, the challenges and future prospects are discussed in the Conclusions and Perspectives section.

Description: In oil and gas industry, rotary drilling systems are used for energy exploration and productions. These types of systems are composed of two main parts: mechanical and electrical parts. The electrical part is represented by rotating motor called top drive; however, the mechanical part of the system is composed of tool string with many pipes, at the bottom end of these pipes the bit is attached to cut the rock during their contact. Since the bit is in a direct contact with rock characteristic variations, it can be under risk for heavy damage. The latter is principally caused by the fact that the rock–bit interaction term is highly nonlinear and unpredictable. In literature, many mathematical models have been proposed for rock–bit interaction, but they do not reflect the dynamic of the bit under vibrations since torsional and axial vibrations are strongly coupled and synchronized with it. In industrial development, the design of drill bit has faced many improvements in order to overcome these vibrations and mitigate unpredictable phenomena. Even though, the practical use of these drill bits confirmed that there are still many failures and damages for the new designs; moreover, bits’ virtual life become shorter than before. The objective of this study is to analyze the drill bit deformations caused by the stick-slip vibration phenomenon which is characterized by high-frequency high-amplitude in rotary drilling systems. The obtained results were validated through a case study of MWD (measurement while drilling) data of well located in a Southern Algerian oil field.

Description: In the field of speaker verification, probabilistic linear discriminant analysis (PLDA) is the dominant method for back-end scoring. To estimate the PLDA model, the between-class covariance and within-class precision matrices must be estimated from samples. However, the empirical covariance/precision estimated from samples has estimation errors due to the limited number of samples available. In this paper, we propose a method to improve the conventional PLDA by estimating the PLDA model using the regularized within-class precision matrix. We use graphical least absolute shrinking and selection operator (GLASSO) for the regularization. The GLASSO regularization decreases the estimation errors in the empirical precision matrix by making the precision matrix sparse, which corresponds to the reflection of the conditional independence structure. The experimental results on text-dependent speaker verification reveal that the proposed method reduce the relative equal error rate by up to 23% compared with the conventional PLDA.

Description: Currently, challenges in quality improvement have driven various enterprises to create quality management systems in smart factories. The development of quality management systems enables quality control for reviewing product quality, identification, and eliminating product failures. However, process adjustment in quality control decisions may be hard to determine when failures are detected. To overcome this problem, an expert system (ES) that applies the failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA) method for developing quality control systems in brake disc production lines is considered. This quality control system concentrates on analyzing product defects that occur frequently in the production line and will lead to an improved performance of the braking system; the selected product defects are disc thickness variation (DTV), runout, and parallelism. This quality control system developed two modules, the designed FMEA (DFMEA) and component FMEA, which apply a rule-based algorithm for selecting actions. We propose the rules of configuration into the expert system code. The results indicate that the operator can carry out a quality control system with decision-making that can be supported by intelligent searching and reasoning in an expert system.

Description: This paper deals with the real-time energy management of a fuel cell/battery/supercapacitors energy storage system for electric vehicles. The association of the battery and the supercapacitors with the fuel cell aims to reduce the hydrogen consumption while limiting the constraints on the fuel cell and the battery. In this paper, a real-time optimization-based energy management strategy by λ-control is proposed. Simulation results on a standard driving cycle show that the hydrogen consumption is reduced by 7% in comparison with a fuel-cell-based electric vehicle without any secondary energy storage source. Moreover, the energy management strategy ensures the system safety while preserving the fuel cell and the battery. Experimental results show that the developed energy management strategy is well-suited for the real-time requirements, applicability, and safety.

Description: With the development of machine learning in recent years, the application of machine learning to machine fault diagnosis has become increasingly popular. Applying traditional feature extraction methods for complex systems will weaken the characterization capacity of features, which are not conducive to subsequent classification work. A reciprocating compressor is a complex system. In order to improve the fault diagnosis accuracy of complex systems, this paper does not use traditional fault diagnosis methods and applies deep convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to process this nonlinear and non-stationary fault signal. The valve fault data is obtained from the reciprocating compressor test bench of the Daqing Natural Gas Company. Firstly, the single-channel vibration signal is collected on the reciprocating compressor and the one-dimensional CNN (1-D CNN) is used for fault diagnosis and compared with the traditional model to verify the effectiveness of the 1-D CNN. Next, the collected eight channels signals (three channels of vibration signals, four channels of pressure signals, one channel key phase signal) are applied by 1-D CNN and 2-D CNN for fault diagnosis to verify the CNN that it is still suitable for multi-channel signal processing. Finally, further study on the influence of the input of different channel signal combinations on the model diagnosis accuracy is carried out. Experiments show that the seven-channel signal (three-channel vibration signal, four-channel pressure signal) with the key phase signal removed has the highest diagnostic accuracy in the 2-D CNN. Therefore, proper deletion of useless channels can not only speed up network operations but also improve diagnosis accuracy.

Description: The vibration energy derived from vehicle movement over a road surface was first converted to rotational energy during vehicle operation by installing blades in the suspension system. The rotational energy was converted to electrical energy using the rotational energy as the input value of the rotary generator. The vibrations from the road’s surface were analyzed using CarSim-Simulink. The blades’ characteristics were analyzed using ANSYS Fluent. The T–ω curve was derived, and the power generation of the rotary generator was verified using the commercial electromagnetic analysis program, ANSYS MAXWELL. For high power generation, the design was optimized using PIAnO (process integration, automation, and optimization), a PIDO (process integration and design optimization) tool. The amount of power generation was 59.4562 W, which was a 122.47% increase compared to the initial model. The remaining problems were analyzed, and further studies were performed. This paper proposes the applicability and development direction of suspension with energy harvesting by installing blades on suspension.

Description: The coastline environment and urban areas of Peru overlooking the Pacific Ocean are among the most affected by El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, and its cascading hazards such as floods, landslides and avalanches. In this work, the complete archives of the European Space Agency (ESA)’s European Remote-Sensing (ERS-1/2) missions and European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel-1 constellation were screened to select synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images covering the most severe and recent ENSO-related flooding events that affected Lima, the capital and largest city of Peru, in 1997–1998 and 2017–2018. Based on SAR backscatter color composites and ratio maps retrieved from a series of pre-, cross- and post-event SAR pairs, flooded areas were delineated within the Rímac River watershed. These are mostly concentrated along the riverbanks and plain, where low-lying topography and gentle slopes (≤5°), together with the presence of alluvial deposits, also indicate greater susceptibility to flooding. A total of 409 areas (58.50 km2) revealing change were mapped, including 197 changes (32.10 km2) due to flooding-related backscatter variations (flooded areas, increased water flow in the riverbed, and riverbank collapses and damage), and 212 (26.40 km2) due to other processes (e.g., new urban developments, construction of river embankments, other engineering works, vegetation changes). Urban and landscape changes potentially contributing, either detrimentally or beneficially, to flooding susceptibility were identified and considered in the overall assessment of risk. The extent of built-up areas within the basin was mapped by combining information from the 2011 Global Urban Footprint (GUF) produced by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Open Street Map (OSM) accessed from the Quantum GIS (QGIS) service, and 2011–2019 very high-resolution optical imagery from Google Earth. The resulting flooding risk map highlights the sectors of potential concern along the Rímac River, should flooding events of equal severity as those captured by SAR images occur in the future.

Description: The physicochemical characterization of pharmaceutical materials is essential for drug discovery, development and evaluation, and for understanding and predicting their interaction with physiological systems. Amongst many measurement techniques for spectroscopic characterization of pharmaceutical materials, Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) is powerful as it can be used to model the electrical properties of pure substances and compounds in correlation with specific chemical composition. In particular, the accurate measurement of specific properties of drugs is important for evaluating physiological interaction. The electrochemical modelling of compounds is usually carried out using spectral impedance data over a wide frequency range, to fit a predetermined model of an equivalent electrochemical cell. This paper presents experimental results by EIS analysis of four drug formulations (trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole C14H18N4O3-C10H11N3O3, ambroxol C13H18Br2N2O.HCl, metamizole sodium C13H16N3NaO4S, and ranitidine C13H22N4O3S.HCl). A wide frequency range from 20 Hz to 30 MHz is used to evaluate system identification techniques using EIS data and to obtain process models. The results suggest that arrays of linear R-C models derived using system identification techniques in the frequency domain can be used to identify different compounds.

Description: Male and female moths communicate in complex ways to search for and to select a mate. In a process termed calling, females emit small quantities of pheromones, generating plumes that spread in the environment. Males detect the plume through their antennae and navigate toward the female. The reproductive process is marked by female choice and male–male competition, since multiple males aim to reach the female but only the first can mate with her. This provides an opportunity for female selection on male traits such as chemosensitivity to pheromone molecules and mobility. We develop a mathematical framework to investigate the overall mating likelihood, the mean first arrival time, and the quality of the first male to reach the female for four experimentally observed female calling strategies unfolding over a typical one-week mating period. We present both analytical solutions of a simplified model as well as results from agent-based numerical simulations. Our findings suggest that, by adjusting call times and the amount of released pheromone, females can optimize the mating process. In particular, shorter calling times and lower pheromone titers at onset of the mating period that gradually increase over time allow females to aim for higher-quality males while still ensuring that mating occurs by the end of the mating period.

Description: Maximum depth of penetration (DOP) is among the most relevant parameters in quality assurance programs for Ultrasound (US) scanners. Nowadays, a generally-accepted protocol for DOP estimation is still awaited and, in common practice, DOP is visually assessed despite the low accuracy. To overcome the eye-based assessment subjectivity, automatic image analysis methods have been proposed in literature. The present work focuses on a novel automatic method, namely the adaptive Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) threshold method (AdSTM), developed in the MATLAB environment, by comparing it with an existing automatic approach, namely the tangent threshold method (TTM), and the mean judgment of eight observers (naked eye method). The three investigated methods were applied on data acquired from four US scanners for general purpose imaging, equipped with linear, convex, and vector array probes. Tests were carried out in two different configuration settings (raw scanner and default preset working conditions). AdSTM outcomes were tested by means of Monte Carlo Simulations. Most of measurement results were compatible despite the fact that the AdSTM seemed to be more sensitive and faster than the TTM. The results analysis confirms the higher dispersion of the naked eye method in DOP assessment with respect to the proposed automatic methods.

Description: Proximal humerus fractures are becoming more common due to the aging of the population, and more related scientific research is also emerging. Biomechanical studies attempt to optimize treatments, taking into consideration the factors involved, to obtain the best possible treatment scenario. To achieve this, the use of finite element analysis (FEA) is necessary, to experiment with situations that are difficult to replicate, and which are sometimes unethical. Furthermore, low costs and time requirements make FEA the perfect choice for biomechanical studies. Part of the complete process of an FEA involves three-dimensional (3D) bone modeling, mechanical properties assignment, and meshing the bone model to be analyzed. Due to the lack of standardization for bone modeling, properties assignment, and the meshing processes, this article aims to review the most widely used techniques to model the proximal humerus bone, according to its anatomy, for FEA. This study also seeks to understand the knowledge and bias behind mechanical properties assignment for bone, and the similarities/differences in mesh properties used in previous FEA studies of the proximal humerus. The best ways to achieve these processes, according to the evidence, will be analyzed and discussed, seeking to obtain the most accurate results for FEA simulations.

Description: Underground coal mining-induced ground subsidence (or major ground vertical settlement) is a major concern to the mining industry, government and people affected. Based on the probability integral method, this paper presents a new ground subsidence prediction method for predicting irregularly shaped coal mining area extraction-induced ground subsidence. Firstly, the Delaunay triangulation method is used to divide the irregularly shaped mining area into a series of triangular extraction elements. Then, the extraction elements within the calculation area are selected. Finally, the Monte Carlo method is used to calculate extraction element-induced ground subsidence. The proposed method was tested by two experimental data sets: the simulation data set and direct leveling-based subsidence observations. The simulation results show that the prediction error of the proposed method is proportional to mesh size and inversely proportional to the amount of generated random points within the auxiliary domain. In addition, when the mesh size is smaller than 0.5 times the minimum deviation of the inflection point of the mining area, and the amount of random points within an auxiliary domain is greater than 800 times the area of the extraction element, the difference between the proposed method-based subsidence predictions and the traditional probability integral method-based subsidence predictions is marginal. The measurement results show that the root-mean-square error of the proposed method-based subsidence predictions is smaller than 3 cm, the average of absolute deviations of the proposed method-based subsidence predictions is 2.49 cm, and the maximum absolute deviation is 4.05 cm, which is equal to 0.75% of the maximum direct leveling-based subsidence observation.

Description: Deep learning has given AI-based methods for music creation a boost by over the past years. An important challenge in this field is to balance user control and autonomy in music generation systems. In this work, we present BassNet, a deep learning model for generating bass guitar tracks based on musical source material. An innovative aspect of our work is that the model is trained to learn a temporally stable two-dimensional latent space variable that offers interactive user control. We empirically show that the model can disentangle bass patterns that require sensitivity to harmony, instrument timbre, and rhythm. An ablation study reveals that this capability is because of the temporal stability constraint on latent space trajectories during training. We also demonstrate that models that are trained on pop/rock music learn a latent space that offers control over the diatonic characteristics of the output, among other things. Lastly, we present and discuss generated bass tracks for three different music fragments. The work that is presented here is a step toward the integration of AI-based technology in the workflow of musical content creators.

Description: The paper aims to compare the oriented strand boards (OSBs) made in the laboratory from a mixture of softwood species to those made from hardwood species, followed by their comparison to European and industry standards. In this regard, the main properties of the panels made in the laboratory were determined, including density, absorption, and swelling in thickness, modulus of elasticity, modulus of rupture, and internal bond. The analysis of the properties of swelling (24 h) and absorption (24 h) revealed that the mixture of softwood species was slightly better thanthe hardwood one. It was also shown that the panels manufactured from the mixture of hardwood species had better mechanical properties than those made of the softwood mixture (modulus of rupture (MOR) = 43.48 N/mm2, modulus of elasticity (MOE) = 7253 N/mm, and internal bond (IB) = 1.57 N/mm2). Additionally, the comparative analysis of properties indicates that the density is highly significant in determining the MOE values of the OSBs. This will allow softwood speciestobe replaced with other species of soft and fast-growing deciduous trees such as willow, birch, and poplar in the manufacture of oriented strand boards.

Description: We wish to make the following correction to the published paper [1] as Affiliation 2 is incorrect[...]

Description: The resource management of an application is an essential task in smartphones. Optimizing the application launch process results in a faster and more efficient system, directly impacting the user experience. Predicting the next application that will be used can orient the smartphone to address the system resources to the correct application, making the system more intelligent and efficient. Neural networks have been presenting outstanding results in the state-of-the-art for mapping large sequences of data, outperforming all previous classification and prediction models. A recurrent neural network (RNN) is an artificial neural network associated with sequence models, and it can recognize patterns in sequences. One of the areas that use RNN is language modeling (LM). Given an arrangement of words, LM can learn how the words are organized in sentences, making it possible to predict the next word given a group of previous words. We propose building a predictive model inspired by LM. However, instead of using words, we will use previous applications to predict the next application. Moreover, some context features, such as timestamp and energy record, will be included in the prediction model to evaluate the impact of the features on the performance. We will provide the following application prediction result and extend it to the top-k possible candidates for the next application.

Description: Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication has been widely studied in recent years for the rapid development of the vehicular traffic. In this paper, a V2X communication system integrating the probabilistic shaping (PS) bitloading multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) visible light communication (VLC) and the millimeter wave radar is proposed. The PS bitloading algorithm utilizes the full spectrum resource of the LED headlights, and the MIMO configuration enhances the performance of the VLC system. Furthermore, the linear and nonlinear interpolation method makes it possible to calculate the SNR at every point from the SNR measured at several discrete calibration points. The SNR table enables the radar to guide the VLC according to the distance, achieving the highest achievable information rate (AIR) at every point. The system supports the V2X communication beyond 1.1 Gb/s up to 5 m. This is the first VLC based V2X sensing and communication system, and the AIR in the system is 1.8484 Gb/s. As far as we know, it is the highest data rate reported in the LED headlight based VLC system.

Description: Increasing amounts of sustainable concretes are being used as society becomes more aware of the environment. This paper attempts to evaluate the properties of precast concrete elements formed with recycled coarse aggregate and low clinker content cement using recycled additions. To this end, six different mix proportions were characterized: a reference concrete; 2 concretes with 25%wt. and 50%wt. substitution of coarse aggregate made using mixed construction and demolition wastes; and others with recycled cement with low clinker content. The compressive strength, the elastic modulus, and the durability indicator decrease with the proportions of recycled aggregate replacing aggregate, and it is accentuated with the incorporation of recycled cement. However, all the precast elements tested show good performance with slight reduction in the mechanical properties. To confirm the appropriate behaviour of New Jersey precast barriers, a test that simulated the impact of a vehicle was carried out.

Description: DC motor speed synchronization is a critical problem in industrial and robotic applications. To tackle this problem, we propose to use a multi-agent consensus-based control scheme that guarantees the convergence of the DC motor speeds to either fixed or time-varying reference. A detailed robustness analysis considering parametric uncertainty and time delay in the multi-agent system is performed to guarantee the consensus on the speed of DC motors in actual practice. The results obtained concerning the robustness analysis allowed us to implement experimental tests on a three-motor system using a wireless communication system to achieve satisfactory performance.

Description: To evaluate the effect of simultaneous liquid or gel sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl) irrigation on cyclic fatigue of F6 SkyTaper (F6ST) and OneCurve (OC) single files, 180 new 25/0.06 F6ST and OC files were divided into 6 groups (n = 15) for each brand. Groups 1 and 4 included new instruments not exposed to NaOCl at 20 °C and 37 °C, respectively. Groups 2 and 5 included files activated with liquid NaOCl at 20 °C and 37 °C, respectively. Groups 3 and 6 consisted of instruments tested with NaOCl gel at 20 °C and 37 °C, respectively. Instruments were subjected to a fatigue test using a novel customized device. Data were expressed as time to fracture (TtF) and statistically analyzed (p 〈 0.05) after checking their normality through the Shapiro–Wilk test. Because they were normally distributed, 2-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) and the Tukey multiple comparison post-hoc test were used. Time to fracture of all tested instruments decreased at 37 °C (p 〈 0.05). At 20 °C, NaOCl improved TtF of F6ST and OC (p 〈 0.05). NaOCl liquid increased TtF of F6ST (p 〈 0.05) in comparison with gel, while there was no difference between the two formulations for OC. At 37 °C, both NaOCl formulations had no significant influence on TtF for F6ST, while they increased TtF of OC (p 〈 0.05). NaOCl improved the cyclic fatigue resistance of OC, independently of the temperature, while for F6ST the negative impact of higher temperature reduced the irrigant benefits.

Description: The geolocation of skyline provides an important application in unmanned vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles, and other fields. However, the existing methods are not effective in hilly areas. In this paper, we analyze the difficulties to locate in hilly areas and propose a new geolocation method. According to the vegetation in hilly area, two new skyline features, enhanced angle chain code and lapel point, are proposed. In order to deal with the skyline being close to the camera, we also propose a matching method which incorporates skyline distance heatmap and skyline pyramid. The experimental results show that the proposed method is highly effective in hilly area and has a robust performance against noise and rotation effects.

Description: The studies were conducted on the natural waters of Georgia: Gortubani and Naminauri (Adigeni region), Danisparauli, Dandalo and Makhinjauri (Adjara region) which exhibit medicinal properties. The following water indicators were determined: titratable acidity, electrical conductivity, hardness, the content of solids, sulfates, chlorides, hydrocarbonates, nitrates, ammonium salts and metals. These indicators were determined in the source water, as well as in the concentrate and permeate obtained by ultrafiltration. The productivity of the ultrafiltration process was determined, its dependence on the duration of the process, the applied pressure and the location of the spring. The productivity of the Danisparauli water ultrafiltration process decreases with time; the productivity remains unchanged during the filtration of the Makhinjauri and Naminauri waters; during ultrafiltration, the titratable acidity of the Makhinjauri water increases significantly, by 66.5%, that of the water Naminauri by 36.6%, the titratable acidity of the Danisparauli water remains unchanged, the sulfide ion content in the Makhinjauri water increases by 12%, and in the Naminauri water by 35.5%, the chloride content in the process of concentrating practically does not change. It was found that all the investigated waters are contaminated with heavy metals and the population should not use them for treatment. The data obtained can be used to simulate the purification of natural sources.

Description: We apply power spectral analysis based on covariance function and spectral subtraction to detect adjacent and non-adjacent bar breakages. We obtain a spectral pattern when the signal presents one or various broken bars, independent of the relative position of the bar breakages. The proposed algorithm gives satisfactory results for detectability compared to some previous research. Additionally, we also present illustrations of faults and signal to noise in the noise-reduction stage.

Description: The resonant column test includes torsional and flexural modes that can be used to obtain reduction curves for the shear modulus and Young’s modulus of the soil, respectively. When the resonant column test is performed under flexural mode, Young’s modulus is calculated mainly using the measured resonant frequency following the formula proposed by Cascante et al. However, this formula does not consider the rotational inertia effect of the electromagnetic drive disk of the resonant column apparatus and thus may inaccurately calculate Young’s modulus. In this study, the formula was modified by considering the rotational inertia effect of the electromagnetic drive disk, and its accuracy was verified by using three aluminum calibration rods with different diameters as a dummy specimen for the resonant tests in flexural and torsional modes.

Description: (1) Background: Macroporous hydrogel scaffolds based on poly [N-(2-hydroxypropyl) methacrylamide] are one of the widely studied biocompatible materials for tissue reparation and regeneration. This study investigated the morphological changes during hydrogel characterization which can significantly influence their future application. (2) Methods: Three types of macroporous soft hydrogels differing in pore size were prepared. The macroporosity was achieved by the addition of sacrificial template particles of sodium chloride of various sizes (0–30, 30–50, and 50–90 µm) to the polymerizing mixture. The 3D structure of the hydrogels was then investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM). The SEM was performed with specimens rapidly frozen to various temperatures, while non-frozen gels were visualized with LSCM. (3 and 4) Results and Conclusion: In comparison to LSCM, the SEM images revealed a significant alteration in the mean pore size and appearance of newly formed multiple connections between the pores, depending on the freezing conditions. Additionally, after freezing for SEM, the gel matrix between the pores and the fine pores collapsed. LSCM visualization aided the understanding of the dynamics of pore generation using sodium chloride, providing the direct observation of hydrogel scaffolds with the growing cells. Moreover, the reconstructed confocal z-stacks were a promising tool to quantify the swollen hydrogel volume reconstruction which is not possible with SEM.

Description: The Linbeiken area is located in the village of Pingding, Taiwan. Since the Mindulle and Aere Typhoons in 2004, and as a result of the landslide triggered by the continuous heavy rainfall on 9 June 2006, there has been a persistent collapse of side slopes in the area. This paper describes the equipment that was installed to collect on-site topographic and hydrological information in the Linbeiken area upstream of the Pingding River and to monitor changes in the landslide area, as well as the measurements that were collected during the 2008 Typhoon Sinlaku. A case study of a landslide in Pingding, Taiwan was used to monitor the accurate coordinate changes in the potential landslide areas during typhoons. The goal of this study was to establish warning indexes, and to strengthen the software and hardware at the local disaster response center in the hope of gaining a full idea of the surface movement in landslide areas in future flood seasons. This is important for boosting the preparedness to adapt to landslide hazards, for improving disaster warnings, and for reporting efficiently to better protect the lives and property of local residents. The results show that the landslide disaster monitoring and warning system in Taiwan, as applied during Typhoon Sinlaku in 2008, is both effective and comprehensive.

Description: Polyaniline (PANI) is a promising conducting polymer for surface modification of TiO2 to achieve extended photoresponse to visible light and increased photocatalytic efficiency. In this study, we report the synthesis of a PANI/TiO2 composite with different weight ratios of PANI, which was subsequently employed for photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB), bisphenol A (BPA), and bacteriophage MS2 under visible-light irradiation. The functional groups, morphology, and light response of the composite were characterized by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, field-emission transmission electron microscopy, and diffuse reflectance UV–visible spectroscopy, respectively. The PANI/TiO2 composite containing 4% by weight ratio of PANI was most suitable for MB degradation, and this photocatalyst was very stable even after repeated use (four cycles). The degradation of BPA and bacteriophage MS2 by PANI/TiO2 composite reached 80% in 360 min and 96.2% in 120 min, respectively, under visible-light irradiation. Therefore, the PANI/TiO2 composite with enhanced visible-light photocatalytic efficiency and stability can be widely used for the degradation of water contaminants.

Description: Previous cognitive training games for stroke survivors required the close supervision of therapists. We aim to demonstrate the preliminary therapeutic effectiveness of Neuro-World, serious mobile games for cognitive training, in chronic stroke survivors with mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment without therapist supervision. For that, we conducted a randomized, controlled clinical trial at a single long-term care rehabilitation center with 50 stroke survivors in the chronic stage with mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment. Participants were randomized to standard medical care (n = 25) or standard medical care plus administration of Neuro-World (n = 25) over 12 weeks. A two-way mixed model ANOVA and Tukey’s post hoc tests identified significant differences in outcomes between the experimental and the control groups at post-intervention but not at baseline. Within the experimental group, there were statistically significant improvements in all the outcomes except for the language category of the Mini-Mental State Examination and Digit Forward Span. The improvements were clinically significant for the total Mini-Mental State Examination, Digit Forward Span, and Digit Backward Span. Within the control group, there were no improvements in any of the outcomes. The practice of Neuro-World led to significant improvements in cognitive function and marginal mitigation of depressive symptoms in chronic stroke survivors with mild-to-moderate cognitive impairment.

Description: To accommodate lots of training data and complex training models, “distributed” deep learning training has become employed more and more frequently. However, communication bottlenecks between distributed systems lead to poor performance of distributed deep learning training. In this study, we proposed a new collective communication method in a Python environment by utilizing Multi-Channel Dynamic Random Access Memory (MCDRAM) in Intel Xeon Phi Knights Landing processors. Major deep learning software platforms, such as TensorFlow and PyTorch, offer Python as a main development language, so we developed an efficient communication library by adapting Memkind library, which is a C-based library to utilize high-performance memory MCDRAM. For performance evaluation, we tested the popular collective communication methods in distributed deep learning, such as Broadcast, Gather, and AllReduce. We conducted experiments to analyze the effect of high-performance memory and processor location on communication performance. In addition, we analyze performance in a Docker environment for further relevance given the recent major trend of Cloud computing. By extensive experiments in our testbed, we confirmed that the communication in our proposed method showed performance improvement by up to 487%.

Description: In aero-engines, the introduction of biofuels is among the best alternatives to fossil fuels, and this change is likely to affect the impact of droplets on interposed surfaces. Under this framework, this work reviews the main morphological hydrodynamic structures occurring upon the impact of a liquid droplet on a wetted surface, using jet fuel and biofuel mixtures as alternative fuels. The experiments performed allow investigating the effect of the liquid film thickness on the dynamic behavior of single drop impact, considering the relevancy of these phenomena to the optimization of engine operating parameters. Particular emphasis is given to the occurrence of crown splash, and the morphological differences in the outcomes of drop impact depending on the impact conditions and fluid properties. The four fluids tested included pure water (as reference), 100% Jet A-1, 75%/25%, and 50%/50% mixtures of Jet A-1 and NExBTL (Neste Renewable Diesel)—with the Weber impact number between 103 and 1625; Reynolds values 1411–16,889; and dimensionless film thicknesses of δ = 0.1, 0.5, and 1. The analysis on the secondary atomization for the different fluids evidences the predominance of prompt and crown splash, and jetting for alternative fuels. Finally, besides a systematic review of empirical correlations for the transition to splash, we investigate their universality by extrapolating the validation range to evaluate their ability to predict the outcome of impact accurately. One of the correlations studied show the highest degree of universality for the current experimental conditions, despite its limitation to thin liquid films (δ=0.1).

Description: Living in an underdeveloped region implies a higher cost of living: access to services, such as school, work, medical care, and groceries, becomes more costly than those who live in regions with better infrastructure. We are interested in studying how mobility affects the cost of living and the subjective wellbeing of residents in underdeveloped regions. We conducted a four-weeks sensing campaign with 14 users in Camino Verde (an underserved region in Tijuana, Mexico). All of the participants used a mobile system that we developed to track their daily mobility. The participants were indicated not to change their daily routine for the study as they carried the tracking device. We analyzed 537 individual routes from different city points and calculated their mobility divergences, while comparing the actual route chosen against the route that was suggested by Google Maps and using this not as the optimal route, but as the baseline. Our results allowed for us to quantify and observe how Camino Verde residents are affected in their mobility in four crucial aspects: geography, time, economy, and safety. A posteriori qualitative analysis, using semi-structured interviews, complemented the quantitative observations and provided insights into the mobility decisions that those people living in underserved regions have to take.

Description: This study investigates the trend in monthly and annual rainfall, minimum and maximum temperature (Tmin and Tmax) using the Mann–Kendall (MK) test and Sen’s slope (SS) method and evaluates the significance of their variability for maize, sorghum and millet yields in northern Togo employing multiple regression analysis. The historical data of Kara, Niamtougou, Mango and Dapaong weather stations from 1977 to 2012 were used. Four non-parametric methods—Alexandersson’s Standard Normal Homogeneity Test (SNHT), Buishand’s Range Test (BRT), Pettitt’s Test (PT) and Von Neumann’s Ratio Test (VNRT)—were applied to detect homogeneity in the data. For the data which were serially correlated, a modified version of the MK test (pre-whitening) was utilised. Results showed an increasing trend in the annual rainfall in all four locations. However, this trend was only significant at Dapaong (p 〈 0.1). There was an increasing trend in Tmax at Kara, Mango and Niamtougou, unlike Dapaong where Tmax revealed a significant decreasing trend (p 〈 0.01). Similarly, there was an increasing trend in Tmin at Kara, Mango and Dapaong, unlike Niamtougou where Tmin showed a non-significant decreasing trend (p 〉 0.05). Rainfall in Dapaong was found to have increased (7.79 mm/year) more than the other locations such as Kara (2.20 mm/year), Niamtougou (4.57 mm/year) and Mango (0.67 mm). Tmax increased by 0.13, 0.13 and 0.32 °C per decade at Kara, Niamtougou and Mango, respectively, and decreased by 0.20 per decade in Dapaong. Likewise, Tmin increased by 0.07, 0.20 and 0.02 °C per decade at Kara, Mango and Dapaong, respectively, and decreased by 0.01 °C per decade at Niamtougou. Results of multiple regression analysis revealed nonlinear yield responses to changes in rainfall and temperature. Rainfall and temperature variability affects rainfed cereal crops production, but the effects vary across crops. The temperature has a positive effect on maize yield in Kara, Niamtougou and Mango but a negative effect on sorghum in Niamtougou and millet in Dapaong, while rainfall has a negative effect on maize yield in Niamtougou and Dapaong and millet yield in Mango. In all locations, rainfall and temperature variability has a significant effect on the cereal crop yields. There is, therefore, a need to adopt some adaptation strategies for sustainable agricultural production in northern Togo.

Description: The development of the Electromagnetic Property Measurement System is underway at the Korea Basic Science Institute. The Electromagnetic Property Measurement System is used for electrical, thermal, and magnetic specimen property measurements in variable magnetic fields and temperatures with a low-temperature superconducting magnet. To activate low-temperature superconducting magnet that operates with liquid helium, we propose the use of vapor-cooled current leads. The low-temperature superconducting magnet is connected to the power supply at room temperature through a pair of current leads. Accordingly, heat inflows through the current leads and represents one of the major contributory factors of the entire heat inflow. Therefore, design optimization and evaluation of the current leads is necessary to minimize heat and liquid helium consumption. Vapor-cooled, and hybrid current leads were designed and fabricated, and testing in liquid helium cryostat was conducted. The low-temperature superconducting magnet was charged with electrical current up to the operating level, and the liquid helium boil-off rate was measured with respect to the supplied electrical current level. The performances of the two current leads were accessed based on the thermal load and boil-off rate of the liquid helium. The experimental and analyzed liquid helium boil-off rates associated with the current leads were in close agreement.

Description: This paper presents an approach that enables the specific characteristics of a primary tunnel lining implemented using numerical modelling to be taken into account during its design. According to the fundamental principles of the New Austrian Tunnelling Method, the primary lining undergoes time-dependent deformation, which is determined by its design. The main design element is shotcrete, which, shortly after its application, interacts with the surrounding rock mass and steel arch frame. The primary lining ensures the equilibrium stress–strain state of “rock mass–tunnel lining” during excavation. The structural interaction varies depending on the hardening of the shotcrete, the rheological properties of the rock mass, and other factors. The proposed approach uses the Homogenisation software application, which was developed by the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Department of Geotechnics and Underground Engineering of the VSB—Technical University of Ostrava. This software allows the heterogeneous structure of the lining to be considered by replacing it with a homogenous structure. The parameters of the homogeneous primary lining, which take into account the steel reinforcement elements and the time-dependent property of the shotcrete, are included in numerical models.

Description: Gaseous agents are widely used in fire extinguishing systems (FESs) when water extinguishing agents are unavailable. The extinguishing ability of the FES-gaseous agent is determined by the retention time (hold time) at which its concentration is maintained. In particular, the retention time of the inert agent is determined by the O2 inflow from the outside. However, current theoretical models for inert agents do not provide an accurate model for the diffusion of incoming O2. Specifically, because the theoretical equations do not include O2 diffusion or include too large a value, there is a large difference between the measured and theoretical retention times. Therefore, in this study, accurate O2 diffusion was verified through experimental and numerical analyses using three types of deactivators and reflected in the existing theoretical model. O2 diffusion was analyzed through the interface slope α and diffusion velocity vd. As a result, this proposed method can predict the retention time more accurately than existing theoretical models.

Description: Since most goods are transported and stored in a unit-load form in today’s global supply chain, there has been a growing concern regarding the compression strength of corrugated paperboard boxes for packaging of agricultural products. The best predictor of the compression strength of corrugated boxes is the edgewise compression test (ECT) value; therefore, its efficient measurement or prediction is crucial for the design of more efficient corrugated boxes for food and agricultural and industrial products. This study investigated the edgewise compression behavior (load vs. displacement plot, ECT, and failure mechanism) of corrugated paperboard based on different types of testing standards and flute types using finite element analysis (FEA) and experimental analysis. The results of this study showed that the magnitude of the ECT values produced by the FEA was different from the values produced by the experiment. The difference in the ECT can be possibly explained by layer thickness approximations, together with glue line width assumptions between fluting and the liners in the numerical models. However, the trends of the values were the same. If the material properties of corrugated paperboard components and modeling methods of the corrugated paperboard are further studied, the FE (finite element)-based simulation technique will be a useful alternative tool that can replace the edgewise compression test.

Description: Cylinder-shaped fuel pellets that were 3 mm in diameter and 3 mm in height, with a mass of 20 mg, were produced by compressing dry coal processing waste under the pressure of 5 MPa. The first group of pellets from coal dust with a particle size less than 140 µm did not contain any additives. The pellets of the second group of fuel compositions contained an oil-impregnated porous polymer material particle with a size of 0.5 mm in the central part of the experimental sample. The particle was surrounded by coal dust from all sides. The ratio of components was 90:10% for coal dust: polymer particle. The latter value almost completely corresponds to the fraction of oil in the fuel composition, since the mass of a porous polymer material particle is negligible. The third group of compositions was a 70:30% mixture of coal dust with wood sawdust with a particle size less than 45 µm, or 45–100, 100–200 and 200–500 µm. The ignition and combustion of single fuel pellets were studied under radiant heating in an air medium while varying the temperature from 800 to 1000 °C. The processes during the fuel combustion were recorded by a high-speed video camera, and the concentrations of the main anthropogenic emissions in flue gases were measured by a gas analyzer. The main characteristics were established—ignition delay times (2–8 s) and duration of burnout (40–90 s)—at different heating temperatures. A difference was established in the combustion mechanisms of the pellets, when adding various components to the fuel mixture composition. This has a direct influence on the induction period duration and combustion time, other conditions being equal, as well as on the concentration of nitrogen and sulfur oxides in the flue gases. Adding an oil-impregnated porous polymer particle to the fuel composition intensifies ignition and combustion, since the times of ignition delay and complete burnout of fuel pellets under threshold conditions decrease by 70%, whereas adding wood sawdust reduces the content of nitrogen and sulfur oxides in the flue gases by 30% and 25%, respectively.

Description: A method involving fast large-volume sampling and bag extraction of total gaseous mercury (TGM) using a 5 mL acid solution was developed for stable mercury isotope ratio measurements. A big gold-coated sand trap (BAuT)—a 45 (i.d.) × 300 mm (length) quartz tube with 131 times more trapping material than a conventional gold trap—was used for the collection of a large amount of TGM. The collected TGM was extracted using 5 mL inversed aqua regia in a 2 L Tedlar bag followed by isotope measurements using a cold vapor generator coupled with a multicollector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer. Sampling tests demonstrated that the collection efficiency of the BAuT was 99.9% or higher during the 1–24 h sampling period under the flow rate of 20–100 L min−1. Recovery tests of 24 h bag extraction using 100 ng NIST SRM 8610 exhibited nearly 100% recovery yields. The five measured stable mercury isotope ratios agreed with reference values within 2σ intervals. The overall methodology tested during the pilot field and laboratory studies demonstrated its successful application in analysis, promising highly precise stable mercury isotopic data with a time resolution of less than 24 h.

Description: This aim of this study was to analyze serve and return statistics in elite padel players regarding courtside and gender. The sample contained 668 serves and 600 returns of serves from 14 matches (7 male and 7 female) of the 2019 Masters Finals World Padel Tour. Variables pertaining to serve (number, direction, court side and effectiveness), return of serve (direction, height, stroke type and effectiveness) and point outcome were registered through systematic observation. The main results showed that the serving pair had an advantage in rallies, under 8 shots in women and under 12 shots in men. Statistical differences according to gender and court side were found. Female players execute more backhand and cross-court returns and use more lobs than men. On the right court, serves are more frequently aimed at the “T” and more down the line returns are executed when compared to the left side. Such knowledge could be useful to develop appropriate game strategies and to design specific training exercises based on actual competition context.

Description: In mixed criticality systems (MCSs), the time-triggered scheduling approach focuses on a special case of safety-critical embedded applications which run in a time-triggered environment. Sometimes, for these types of MCSs, perfectly periodical (i.e., jitterless) scheduling for certain critical tasks is needed. In this paper, we propose FENP_MC (Fixed Execution Non-Preemptive Mixed Criticality), a real-time, table-driven, non-preemptive scheduling method specifically adapted to mixed criticality systems which guarantees jitterless execution in a mixed criticality time-triggered environment. We also provide a multiprocessor version, namely, P_FENP_MC (Partitioned Fixed Execution Non-Preemptive Mixed Criticality), using a partitioning heuristic. Feasibility tests are proposed for both uniprocessor and homogenous multiprocessor systems. An analysis of the algorithm performance is presented in terms of success ratio and scheduling jitter by comparing it against a time-triggered and an event-driven method in a non-preemptive context.

Description: The appearance of online map services and frameworks (e.g., KML, QGIS) has increased the possibilities to easily, quickly and—in many cases—cost-effectively publish spatial data stored in databases. The aim of this study is to present the geovisualization of spatial databases of a Hungarian settlement on the web, using the open source webGIS system and Google application programming interfaces (APIs). The interactive point and interpolated distribution maps available online provide a detailed picture of the level of contamination, the spatial distribution of the ground water supply of the investigated settlement, and the changes which have occurred following the establishment of the sewage system. In the case of PO43− we determined that in the year before the sewage system was constructed, most of the area of the settlement could be considered contaminated, with the highest level of contamination measured in the central area of the settlement. Five years after the construction of the sewage system, the ratio of the contaminated areas had significantly decreased. In the case of NO3− we found a high level of contamination before the construction of the sewage system with a concentration increase in a North–West direction. After the establishment of the sewage system, the increase in concentration was the most intense in the central parts of the settlement, while the characteristic spatial distribution could no longer be observed. The geovisualization techniques developed are able to provide information about the different spatial data for users in a visual way, and also help to understand better the spatial information using a cognitive approach. The advantage of interactive web maps created with the technologies applied over traditional static maps is a new approach, which allows the user to manipulate the temporal and spatial data directly in the most appropriate way.

Description: Changes in mechanical stimuli and the physiological environment are sensed by the cell. Thesechanges influence the cell’s motility patterns. The cell’s directional migration is dependent on the substrate stiffness. To describe such behavior of a cell, a tensegrity model was used. Cells with an extended lamellipodium were modeled. The internal elastic strain energy of a cell attached to the substrates with different stiffnesses was evaluated. The obtained results show that on the stiffer substrate, the elastic strain energy of the cell adherent to this substrate decreases. Therefore, the substrate stiffness is one of the parameters that govern the cell’s directional movement.

Description: Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a special form of mobile ad hoc network (MANET), which plays a key role in the intelligent transportation system (ITS). Though many outstanding geographic routing protocols are designed for VANETs, a majority of them use parameters that only affect routing performance. In this article, we propose an intersection routing based on fuzzy multi-factor decision (IRFMFD), which utilizes several features. The scheme is divided into two parts, namely vehicular decision management and intersection decision management. In the vehicular component, candidate vehicles between two static nodes (SNs) located at two intersections derive potential routing paths considering distance, neighbor quantity, and relative velocity. In the intersection component, the candidate SN was chosen from the current intersection’s 2-hop neighbors which were connected with the current intersection by a route that was decided on in part one. To get the best scheme, we also introduced other factors to estimate the number of hops in each link and link lifetime. The simulation shows that the IRFMFD outperforms on delivery ratio and end-to-end delay compared with AODV (Ad hoc on-demand distance vector), GPSR (Greedy perimeter stateless routing) and GeOpps (Geographical opportunistic routing).

Description: Bathymetric mapping with Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUVs) receives increased attentions in recent years. AUVs offer a lower operational cost and smaller carbon footprint with reduced ship usage, and they can provide higher resolution data when surveying the seabed at a closer distance if compared to ships. However, advancements are still needed to improve the data quality of AUV-based surveys. Unlike mobile robots with deterministic mapping performance, multibeam sonars used in AUV-based bathymetric mapping often yields inconsistent swath width due to the varied seabed elevation and surficial properties. As a result, mapping voids may exist between planned lawnmower transects. Although this could be solved by planning closer lawnmower paths, mission time increases proportionally. Therefore, an onboard path planner is demanded to assure the defined survey objective, i.e., coverage rate. Here in this paper, we present a new data-driven coverage path planning (CPP) method, in which the vehicle automatically updates the waypoints intermittently based on an objective function constructed using the information about the exploration preference, sonar performance, and coverage efficiency. The goal of the proposed method is to plan a cost-effective path on-the-fly to obtain high quality mapping result meeting the requirements in coverage rate and uncertainty. The proposed CPP method has been evaluated in a simulated environment with a 6DOF REMUS AUV model and a realistic seafloor topography. A series of trials has been conducted to investigate the performance affected by the parameters in the objective function. We also compared the proposed method with traditional lawnmower and spiral paths. The results show that the weight assignment in the objective function is critical as they affect the overall survey performance. With proper weight settings, the AUV yields better survey performance, coverage rate and coverage efficiency, compared to traditional approaches. Moreover, the proposed method can be easily adjusted or modified to achieve different coverage goals, such as rapid data gathering of the entire region, survey of irregular workspace, or maintaining real time path planning.

Description: The value, care, and customs of workers are essential in terms of occupational health and safety. The abuse of alcohol is widely regarded as a serious threat to the lives, health, and safety of employees. The aim of the research was to identify the main problems that are associated with alcohol abuse and consumption at work among employees in the construction industry, with particular emphasis on workstations where work is carried out on construction scaffoldings. Data for the analysis were obtained from two different sources. The first one was post-accident documentation on occupational accidents. The second one was surveys collected during the research project. This study confirmed that excessive and disproportionate alcohol consumption can be the cause of an accident, and consequently death at workplaces with scaffolding. Of 219 accident reports, 17.4% indicated alcohol as a contributing factor. Analysis of accident documentations shows that in cases where alcohol was indicated as a contributing factor in an accident, the alcohol was consumed during the workday. The results obtained on the basis of the conducted research were able to constitute a justification for the directions of preventive actions carried out in order to reduce the number of occupational accidents in the construction industry caused by alcohol.

Description: The mesh stiffness of gear pairs used in aerospace applications, such as geared turbofan, has a vital influence on vibration and noise. To compensate for the deficiencies of the conventional method that does not consider slice coupling and structure coupling simultaneously, a comprehensive mathematical model for computing the mesh stiffness of helical gears is established. In this novel model, the effect of structure coupling and slice coupling between neighboring sliced gears are considered. The effect of the axial component of meshing force is also taken into account simultaneously. The results obtained by the comprehensive model are consistent with the finite element method and it proves that the novel mathematical model is sound. The influences of the helical angle and addendum modification coefficient on mesh stiffness are studied. The results show that the mesh stiffness of helical gears would be decreased in multiteeth regions caused by structure coupling. With or without consideration of the axial component, the relative mean values of mesh stiffness become larger with an increasing helical angle. The fluctuation value of mesh stiffness decreases when a positive addendum modification coefficient is adopted. The addendum modification also changes the phase of mesh stiffness. This study is helpful for a vibration analysis of gear transmission systems.

Description: Because the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) requires technology that transfers information between objects without human intervention, the core of IoT security will be secure authentication between devices or between devices and servers. Software-based authentication may be a security vulnerability in IoT, but hardware-based security technology can provide a strong security environment. Physical unclonable functions (PUFs) are hardware security element suitable for lightweight applications. PUFs can generate challenge–response pairs(CRPs) that cannot be controlled or predicted by utilizing inherent physical variations that occur in the manufacturing process. In particular, the pulsewidth-based memristive PUF (pm-PUF) improves security performance by applying different write pulse widths and bank structures. Bloom filters (BFs) are probabilistic data structures that answer membership queries using small memories. Bloom filters can improve search performance and reduce memory usage and are used in areas such as networking, security, big data, and IoT. In this paper, we propose a structure that applies Bloom filters based on the pm-PUF to reduce PUF data transmission errors. The proposed structure uses two different Bloom filter types that store different information and that are located in front of and behind the pm-PUF, reducing unnecessary access by removing challenges from attacker access. Simulation results show that the proposed structure decreases the data transmission error rate and reuse rate as the Bloom filter size increases; the simulation results also show that the proposed structure improves pm-PUF security with a very small Bloom filter memory.

Description: With the aim of evaluating local and global dynamic mechanisms of a vast and historical masonry building, a homogeneous structural model is proposed here. It is realized with the assembly of othotropic plates and Timoshenko and pure shear beams as well. The identification of the constitutive parameters is carried out after realizing refined finite element models of building portions, and imposing energy or displacement equivalence with the corresponding homogeneous versions, depending on the complexity of the involved schemes. The outcomes are compared with those provided by experimental investigations, and help to give insight and interpretation on the dynamic behavior of the building.

Description: In this research work, thermal foaming of bottom ash and sodium silicate geopolymer is proposed as a production process for light weight bricks. The composition and temperatures were studied and optimized to get the most suitable intumescence properties for the lightweight construction applications. For this purpose, four different compositions (i.e., 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40% bottom ash (BA)) were cured at four different curing temperatures (CT) (i.e., 200, 400, 500, and 600 °C). Sodium silicate (SS) to sodium hydroxide (SH) ratio was kept constant in order to keep the activation capacity of the solution constant in all the samples so that the effect of composition and CT could be studied effectively. All samples were characterized by bulk density, foamability, compression test, XRD, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), water absorption index (WAI), and weight loss index (WLI). These characterizations finally led to the optimized parameters to get the most appropriate intumescence properties. It was found that bottom ash and sodium silicate geopolymer foams have good potential to produce lightweight aerated blocks.

Description: In order to calibrate the misalignment error of a triaxial magnetometer and an inertial navigation system in a three-component magnetic survey system, an improved method with easy realization is proposed in this paper. We establish the misalignment error model based on Euler’s theorem. We transform the calibration of misalignment error into estimating calibration parameters to minimize the value of objective function. Then, the nonlinear least squares method is used to estimate the calibration parameters. In the simulation experiment, the deviation between the value and the preset value is within 1 nT. In the field experiment, the fluctuation value of the x, y, and z components reduce to 1.09%, 0.92%, and 1.28%, respectively. The absolute deviation values are reduced to 0.72%, 0.70%, and 0.81% and the standard deviation value are reduced to 0.74%, 0.71%, 0.86%, respectively. The proposed method has advantages of high operability and precision as compared with existing methods.

Description: Collecting patient’s medical data is essential for emergency care. Although hospital-tethered personal health records (PHRs) can provide accurate data, they are not available as electronic information when the hospital does not develop and supply PHRs. The objective of this research was to evaluate whether a mobile app can assemble health data from different hospitals and enable interoperability. Moreover, we identified numerous barriers to overcome for putting health data into one place. The new mobile PHR (mPHR) application was developed and evaluated according to the four phases of the system development life cycle: defining input data and functions, developing a prototype, developing a mobile application, and implementation testing. We successfully introduced the FirstER (First for Emergency Room) platform on 23 September 2019. Additionally, validation in three tertiary hospitals has been carried out since the launch date. From 14 October to 29 November 2019, 1051 cases registered with the FirstER, and the total download count was 15,951 records. We developed and successfully implemented the mPHR service, which can be used as a health information exchange tool in emergency care, by integrating medical records from three different tertiary hospitals. By recognizing the significance and limitations of this service, it is necessary to study the development and implementation of mPHR services that are more suitable for emergency care.

Description: Load currents and short-circuit currents in high-voltage power cable lines are sources of the induced voltages in the power cables’ concentric metallic sheaths. When power cables operate with single-point bonding, which is the simplest bonding arrangement, these induced voltages may introduce an electric shock hazard or may lead to damage of the cables’ outer non-metallic sheaths at the unearthed end of the power cable line. To avoid these aforementioned hazards, both-ends bonding of metallic sheaths is implemented but, unfortunately, it leads to increased power losses in the power cable line, due to the currents circulating through the sheaths. A remedy for the circulating currents is cross bonding—the most advanced bonding solution. Each solution has advantages and disadvantages. In practice, the decision referred to its selection should be preceded by a wide analysis. This paper presents a case study of the induced sheath voltages in a specific 110 kV power cable line. This power cable line is a specific one, due to the relatively low level of transferred power, much lower than the one resulting from the current-carrying capacity of the cables. In such a line, the induced voltages in normal operating conditions are on a very low level. Thus, no electric shock hazard exists and for this reason, the simplest arrangement—single-point bonding—was initially recommended at the project stage. However, a more advanced computer-based investigation has shown that in the case of the short-circuit conditions, induced voltages for this arrangement are at an unacceptably high level and risk of the outer non-metallic sheaths damage occurs. Moreover, the induced voltages during short circuits are unacceptable in some sections of the cable line even for both-ends bonding and cross bonding. The computer simulations enable to propose a simple practical solution for limiting these voltages. Recommended configurations of this power cable line—from the point of view of the induced sheath voltages and power losses—are indicated.

Description: Recently, pre-mixed bioceramics in fast set formulations have been increasingly utilized in clinical practice as an alternative to mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) for their shorter setting time and better handling properties. However, the impact on their osteogenic potential, due to modifications in chemical composition to promote a fast setting, is still unclear. This molecular and in vitro study compared the osteogenic potential of root repairing material putty fast set (FSP) with root-repairing material putty (RRMPU), root-repairing material paste (RRMPA), Biodentine™ and MTA. The null hypothesis tested was that there are no differences among the tricalcium silicate materials in terms of osteogenic potential. Standardized discs were cultured with MG-63 human osteoblastic-like cells to assess biocompatibility, the activity of alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and osteogenic potential. Biocompatibility was evaluated at baseline and after 24 and 48 h. Osteogenic differentiation was assessed after 15 days. Data were analyzed with one-way ANOVAs and Tukey’s post-hoc test (p 〈 0.05). All materials showed biocompatibility and bioactivity. ALP activity, which induces mineral nodule deposition, increased in all the cements tested, with a significant increase in RRMPU (p 〈 0.001) and FSP (p 〈 0.001) samples versus MTA. In vitro mineralization was significantly increased for RRMPU (p 〈 0.0001), FSP (p = 0.00012) and Biodentine™ (p 〈 0.0001) versus MTA. The bioceramics tested showed higher levels of biocompatibility and bioactivity than MTA; a higher capacity for mineralization was observed with RRMPU and FSP versus MTA.

Description: Biomass char is accepted as an environmentally friendly energy resource, and is promising for NO removal in industrial furnaces. NO reduction with biomass char (rice husk) was investigated in a fixed-bed quartz reactor. The influence of CO concentration, reaction temperature, initial NO concentration, and char loading on the NO reduction were evaluated. The results showed that the overall NO reduction reaction was dominated by the direct reaction of NO with char without CO. Increasing CO concentration resulted in an enhanced catalytic reaction between NO and CO over the char surface and a decreased carbon consumption of char. With decreasing temperature, the influence of CO concentration on NO reduction was strengthened. Over the test temperature range, char provided a surface to catalyze the NO–CO reaction at excess CO/NO ratio. Increasing the initial NO concentration led to an increasingly significant influence on NO reduction with the enhanced CO/NO ratio. With increased char loading, the enhancement of NO reduction became unobservable for excess CO/NO ratio. Reaction orders of NO and activation energy for NO reduction by char were 0.71 and 60.21 kJ·mol−1, respectively, against 0.82 and 34.60 kJ·mol−1, respectively, for NO reduction by CO, catalyzed by char.

Description: Despite the efforts for minimizing the usage of heavy metals, anthropogenic activities still generate high amounts of wastewater containing these contaminants that cause significant health and environmental problems. Given the drawbacks of the conventional physical and chemical methods currently used, natural biosorbents (microbial cells or their products) arise as promising environmentally friendly alternatives. In this study, the binding efficiency of the polysaccharide secreted by Enterobacter A47, FucoPol, towards lead (Pb2+), cobalt (Co2+), copper (Cu2+) and zinc (Zn2+) cations was demonstrated. FucoPol revealed a higher performance for the biosorption of Pb2+, with a maximum overall metal removal of 93.9 ± 5.3% and a specific metal uptake of 41.1 ± 2.3 mg/gEPS, from a Pb2+ solution with an initial concentration of 10 mg/L, by a 5 g/L FucoPol solution. The overall metal removal decreased considerably (≤31.3 ± 1.6%) for higher Pb2+ concentrations (48 and 100 mg/L) probably due to the saturation of FucoPol’s binding sites. Pb2+ removal was also less efficient (66.0 ± 8.2%) when a higher FucoPol concentration (10 g/L) was tested. Pb2+ removal efficiency of FucoPol was maximized at pH 4.3, however, it was affected by lower pH values (2.5–3.3). Moreover, the FucoPol’s sorption performance was unaffected (overall metal removal: 91.6–93.9%) in the temperature range of 5–40 °C. These findings demonstrate FucoPol’s great potential for utilization as a biodegradable and safe biosorbent for treating waters and wastewaters contaminated with Pb2+.

Description: Assessing the effects of future land use and land cover change (LULC) on ecological processes and functions is crucial for improving regional sustainability in arid and semiarid areas. Taking the Agro-Pastoral Transitional Zone of Northern China (APTZNC) as an example, four IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios scenarios (Scenario of economic emphasis on a regional scale (A1B), Scenario of economic emphasis on a global scale (A2), Scenario of environmental protection on a regional scale (B1), Scenario of environmental protection on a global scale (B2)) were adopted in the study to analyze the influence of the future land use and land cover change on the net primary production (NPP), soil organic matter (SOM), soil total nitrogen (TN), and soil erosion (ERO) using the model of Terrestrial Ecosystem Simulator-Land use/land cover model (TES-LUC) linking ecological processes and land-use change dynamics. The results were analyzed from the perspectives of LULC components, LULC conversions, and landscape patterns under the four scenarios. The main results include the following: (1) Environmentally oriented scenarios (A1B and B1) experienced the conservation of forest and grassland; economically oriented scenarios (A2 and B2) were characterized by significant loss of natural land covers and expansion of agricultural and urban land uses. (2) The NPP and soil nutrients are the highest while the ERO is the lowest in the woodland; the trend in cultivated land is opposite to that in woodland; the grassland ecosystem function is relatively stable and could make an important contribution to effectively mitigate global climate change. (3) The general trend in NPP, SOM, and TN under the four scenarios is B1 〉 A1B 〉 baseline (2010) 〉 B2 〉 A2, and that in ERO is A2 〉 B2 〉 baseline (2010) 〉 A1B 〉 B1. (4) Trade-offs between ecosystem functions and the ecological effects of LULC can be evaluated and formulated into decision-making.

Description: Soy flour was partly substituted for urea-formaldehyde (UF) resin with different content to investigate its effect on formaldehyde emission in three-layer plywood panels. In each square meter of panels, 300 g of resin was used (wet weight basis of resin). Micron-sized wollastonite was added to the resin mixture at 5% and 10% consumption levels (wet weight basis of resin) to determine its potential effects as a reinforcing filler to mitigate the negative effects of addition of soy flour. Results showed a decreasing trend in formaldehyde emission as soy flour content increased to 20%. The highest shear-strength values were observed in panels with 10% and 15% soy flour content. The addition of wollastonite did not have a significant effect on formaldehyde emission, but it decreased the shear strength in soy-treated panels, although the values were still higher than those of control panels. Wollastonite significantly mitigated the negative effects of soy flour on the water absorption and thickness swelling of panels. It was concluded that 10% of soy flour and 5% of wollastonite provided the lowest formaldehyde emission and the most optimum physical and mechanical properties.

Description: This review study, framed in the Work group 4 “Photovoltaic in built environment” within the COST Action PEARL PV, CA16235, aims to examine applications of integrated and applied photovoltaic technologies on ten landmark buildings characterised by distinctive geometries, highlighting the aesthetics of their architecture and quality of PV integration based on a proposed set of seven criteria. The selected building samples cover a large design diversity related to the quality of PV systems integration into building envelope that could serve as a basis for general guidelines of best architectural and technological practice. After introducing the problem and defining the research methodology, an analysis of ten landmark buildings is presented, as representative models of aesthetics of their architecture, photovoltaic integration and implementation and energy performance. The study concludes with the main characteristics of photovoltaic integration on landmark buildings. The paper is intended to support both engineers and architects in comprehending the convergent development of contemporary architecture and photovoltaic technology, as well as the need for a closer collaboration, sometimes resulting in architectural masterworks that promote the diffusion of photovoltaics to the public.

Description: Mercury (Hg) is recognized as a persistent global chemical contaminant that accumulates in biota, thus being an ecological hazard, as well as a health risk to fish consumers [...]

Description: Healthcare is considered as one of the most promising application areas for artificial intelligence and analytics (AIA) just after the emergence of the latter. AI combined to analytics technologies is increasingly changing medical practice and healthcare in an impressive way using efficient algorithms from various branches of information technology (IT). Indeed, numerous works are published every year in several universities and innovation centers worldwide, but there are concerns about progress in their effective success. There are growing examples of AIA being implemented in healthcare with promising results. This review paper summarizes the past 5 years of healthcare applications of AIA, across different techniques and medical specialties, and discusses the current issues and challenges, related to this revolutionary technology. A total of 24,782 articles were identified. The aim of this paper is to provide the research community with the necessary background to push this field even further and propose a framework that will help integrate diverse AIA technologies around patient needs in various healthcare contexts, especially for chronic care patients, who present the most complex comorbidities and care needs.