Temperature Oscillation Calorimetry: Robustness analysis of different algorithms for the evaluation of the heat transfer coefficient

Applicability of different temperature oscillation calorimetry algorithms, previously proposed in the literature, for the evaluation of the heat transfer coefficient during the course of the reaction, is analysed by referring to the experimental data from a methyl methacrylate polymerisation reactor.Results are coincident in the nominal case (no errors on data), while differences appear in the elaboration of real data. The effect of uncertainty in the experimental data has been simulated in terms of error on the amplitude and on the phase of reactor and jacket temperature profiles.This approach allows to indicate algorithms having the best robustness properties and to give an explanation of phase errors in terms of a lumped parameter which accounts for different phenomena, not included in the basic hypotheses of the method. Based on this observation, a procedure to eliminate this source of errors from experimental data is proposed for the more general algorithm presented to handle oscillating temperature profiles generated by different techniques.     

Feeding response of Ips paraconfusus to phloem and phloem metabolites of Heterobasidion annosum-inoculated ponderosa pine,Pinus ponderosa

In studies of feeding by the bark beetle, Ips paraconfusus, two pine stilbenes (pinosylvin and pinosylvin methyl ether), ferulic acid glucoside, and enantiomers of the four most common sugars present in ponderosa pine phloem (sucrose, glucose, fructose, and raffinose) did not stimulate or reduce male feeding when assayed on wet -cellulose with or without stimulatory phloem extractives present. When allowed to feed on wet -cellulose containing sequential extracts (hexane, methanol, and water) of ponderosa pine phloem, methanol and water extractives stimulated feeding, but hexane extractives did not. Males confined in wet -cellulose containing aqueous or organic extracts of culture broths derived from phloem tissue and containing the root pathogen, Heterobasidion annosum, ingested less substrate than beetles confined to control preparations. In an assay using logs from uninoculated ponderosa pines, the mean lengths of phloem in the digestive tracts increased as time spent feeding increased. Males confined to the phloem of basal logs cut from ponderosa pines artificially inoculated with H. annosum ingested significantly less phloem than beetles in logs cut from trees that were (combined) mock-inoculated or uninoculated and did not contain the pathogen. However, individual pathogen-containing treatments were not significantly different from uninoculated controls. It was concluded that altered feeding rates are not a major factor which may explain why diseased ponderosa pines are colonized by I. paraconfusus.     

The locomotive assignment problem: a survey on optimization models

The objective of the locomotive assignment problem (LAP) is to assign a fleet of locomotives to a set of trains while satisfying a rich set of operational and budget constraints and optimizing one or more crucial objectives. This paper presents a survey on optimization models for this class of scheduling problems. Depending on the context of application, the kind of model used to solve the LAP varies; accordingly, this influences the solution methodology and algorithms used. In this paper, we review and also suggest a classification of the various models.     

Minimum-delay schedules in layered networks

Summary In this paper, we consider the following problem: given a layered network including a set of messages, each of which must be transmitted from a source to a sink node, what is the sequence of moves from one node to another which minimizes the total completion time? We first show that the general problem is NP-complete for both fixed and variable path routing (thus the scheduling problem for more realistic networks with cycles must be considered computationally intractable). We then consider several restrictions which admit polynomia time algorithms.Most of this work was done while this author was at the Department of Mathematics, University of Rome La Sapienza     

Personalization and user verification in wearable systems using biometric walking patterns

In this article, a novel technique for user’s authentication and verification using gait as a biometric unobtrusive pattern is proposed. The method is based on a two stages pipeline. First, a general activity recognition classifier is personalized for an specific user using a small sample of her/his walking pattern. As a result, the system is much more selective with respect to the new walking pattern. A second stage verifies whether the user is an authorized one or not. This stage is defined as a one-class classification problem. In order to solve this problem, a four-layer architecture is built around the geometric concept of convex hull. This architecture allows to improve robustness to outliers, modeling non-convex shapes, and to take into account temporal coherence information. Two different scenarios are proposed as validation with two different wearable systems. First, a custom high-performance wearable system is built and used in a free environment. A second dataset is acquired from an Android-based commercial device in a ‘wild’ scenario with rough terrains, adversarial conditions, crowded places and obstacles. Results on both systems and datasets are very promising, reducing the verification error rates by an order of magnitude with respect to the state-of-the-art technologies.     

Li4SiO4 pebbles reduction in He + 0.1% H2 purge gas and effects on tritium release properties

Lithium orthosilicate reduction was examined by Temperature Programmed Reaction (TPR) and Temperature Programmed Desorption (TPD) methods performed in He (or Ar) + H₂ purge gas flowing through pebble bed specimens. The parameters governing the kinetics and the steady-state of the reduction process to Li₄SiO_4−x were determined at 800°C. The level x of the O-vacancy concentration at steady-state (of the order of 1.5×10⁻³ mole fraction) was found to be compatible with the impurities content in the specimens. Pebble pre-annealing treatments were found to affect the microstructure and the reduction mechanism. Post-irradiation tritium release by TPD tests were performed on both stoichiometric and reduced pebbles with similar results. Tritium release properties of this breeder system seem to be independent from the material reduction state (x).     

The evaluation of a social adaptive website for cultural events

In this paper, we present an evaluation of a social adaptive website in the domain of cultural events, iCITY DSA, which provides information about cultural resources and events that promote the cultural heritage in the city of Turin. Using this evaluation, our objective was to investigate the actual usage of a social adaptive website, in an effort to discover the real behavior of users, the unforeseen correlations among user actions and the consequent interactive behavior, the accuracy of both system and social recommendations and their impact on the users themselves, and the role of tagging in the user modeling process. The major contributions of the paper are manifold: insights into user interactions with social adaptive systems; guidelines for future designs; evaluation of the tagging activity and tag meanings in relation to the application domain and thus their impact on the representation of the user model; and a demonstration of how a combination and interplay of evaluation methodologies (e.g., quantitative and qualitative) can enhance our comprehension of evaluation data.     

An approach to the measurement of shunt resistance of individual subcells in thin‐film tandem devices

In this paper, the selective illumination approach is adopted to separately extract the shunt resistance of the individual subcells belonging to a tandem cell. The method relies on simple theoretical considerations and is based on the measurement of the current–voltage characteristic of the tandem cell by alternately keeping one of the subcells under dark conditions. Numerical simulations are employed to support the reliability of the technique, which is experimentally tested on micromorph devices deposited onto glass covered by a V‐shaped transparent conducting oxide and subject to different thermal treatments. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Biobased surfactant-like molecules from organic wastes: the effect of waste composition and composting process on surfactant properties and on the ability to solubilize Tetrachloroethene (PCE)

In this work, four surfactant-like humic acids (HAs) obtained from garden lignocellulose wastes and kitchen food wastes mixed with garden-lignocellulose wastes, both before and after composting, were tested for surfactant properties and the ability to solubilize tetrachloroethene (PCE). The waste-derived HAs showed good surfactant properties, lowering the water surface tension from 74 mN m(-1) to 45.4 +/- 4.4 mN m(-1), with a critical micelle concentration (CMC) of 1.54 +/- 1.68 g L(-1), which is lower than many synthetic ionic surfactants. CMC was affected by both waste origin and composting processes. The addition of food waste and composting reduced CMC by adding alkyl-C (measured by CP MAS 13C NMR) and N- and S-HA contents (amide molecules), so that a multistep regression was found [CMC = 24.6 - 0.189 alkyl C - 2.64 (N + S); R2 = 0.77, P < 0.10, n = 6]. The four HAs solubilized PCE at the rate of 0.18-0.47 g PCE/g aqueous biosurfactant. These results were much higher than those reported in the literature for a commercial HA (0.026 g/g), but they were in line with those measured in this work for nonionic surfactants such as Tween-80 (0.69 g/g) and Triton X-100 (1.08 g/g).