An Analytical Model to Measure the Effectiveness of Safety Management Systems: Global Safety Improve Risk Assessment (G-SIRA) Method

The ever-increasing complexity of production systems, together with the need to obtain efficient processes with limited costs, has led companies to develop custom tools for process control and management. Even for risk assessment, the traditional models often are overcome by methods that are best suited to specific needs. In this context, the aim of this paper was to propose a new model, which we call the global safety improve risk assessment (G-SIRA). This model can classify risks and identify corrective actions that allow the best risk reduction at the lowest cost. The proposed model, which is based on improvements to previous research, uses the analytic hierarchy process approach to develop a valid and simple tool for risk management. The G-SIRA method has been tested in a real-world application, i.e., it was applied to all of the processes of a textile company, and the results were compared with those obtained from the classical approach failure mode, effects, and criticality analysis. The comparison clearly showed the effectiveness of the proposed model.     

Obstacle Modelling Oriented to Safe Motion Planning and Control for Planar Rigid Robot Manipulators

Trajectory planning and tracking are crucial tasks in any application using robot manipulators. These tasks become particularly challenging when obstacles are present in the manipulator workspace. In this paper a n-joint planar robot manipulator is considered and it is assumed that obstacles located in its workspace can be approximated in a conservative way with circles. The goal is to represent the obstacles in the robot configuration space. The representation allows to obtain an efficient and accurate trajectory planning and tracking. A simple but effective path planning strategy is proposed in the paper. Since path planning depends on tracking accuracy, in this paper an adequate tracking accuracy is guaranteed by means of a suitably designed Second Order Sliding Mode Controller (SOSMC). The proposed approach guarantees a collision-free motion of the manipulator in its workspace in spite of the presence of obstacles, as confirmed by experimental results.     

Study on reuse of metal oxide-promoted sulphated zirconia in acylation reactions

A series of sulphated zirconia samples (SZ) promoted with Al₂O₃, Ga₂O₃, and Fe₂O₃ were synthesized by co-precipitation at constant pH and aged under reflux conditions. Structural, surface and catalytic properties of the samples were investigated using N₂ adsorption/desorption, thermal analysis, in-situ FTIR spectroscopy, TPR–MS and EGA–MS measurements. The catalytic performance of promoted SZ in anisole acylation has been investigated. Promotion by either Fe₂O₃ or Ga₂O₃ was found to increase the catalytic activity (yield) after recycle of catalysts with respect un-promoted sample, whereas promotion by Al₂O₃ was observed to increase the conversion but not the yield. It is worth noting that all systems present high selectivity to the p-metoxyacetophenone product.     

A functional polymeric material based on hybrid electrochemically controlled junctions

A thin film polymeric junction was fabricated which yields a molecular electronic device functionally able to learn, i.e. to respond coherently to an external training signal. The fabricated structure is based upon electrochemical control of electronic current in a conducting polymer in contact with a solid electrolyte polymer. This functional behavior bears some resemblance to simple cases of biological learning processes. We report a comprehensive electronic characterization of the device function. Additional study was performed in order to estimate the possibility of the integration of such kinds of devices in statistical adaptive networks.     

An application of kernel methods to gene cluster temporal meta-analysis

The application of various clustering techniques for large-scale gene-expression measurement experiments is a well-established method in bioinformatics. Clustering is also usually accompanied by functional characterization of gene sets by assessing statistical enrichments of structured vocabularies, such as the gene ontology (GO) [Gene Ontology Consortium. The gene ontology (GO) project in 2006. Nucleic Acids Research (Database issue), vol. 34; 2006. p. D322–6]. If different clusters are generated for correlated experiments, a machine learning step termed cluster meta-analysis may be performed, in order to discover relations among the components of such sets. Several approaches have been proposed: in particular, kernel methods may be used to exploit the graphical structure of typical ontologies such as GO. Following up the formulation of such approach [Merico D, Zoppis I, Antoniotti M, Mauri G. Evaluating graph kernel methods for relation discovery in GO-annotated clusters. In: KES-2007/WIRN-2007, Part IV, Lecture notes in artificial intelligence, vol. 4694. Berlin: Springer; 2007. p. 892–900; Zoppis I, Merico D, Antoniotti M, Mishra B, Mauri G. Discovering relations among GO-annotated clusters by graph kernel methods. In: Proceedings of the 2007 international symposium on bioinformatics research and applications. Lecture notes in computer science, vol. 4463. Berlin: Springer; 2007], in this paper we discuss, from an information-theoretic point of view, further results about its applicability and its performance.     

Structural changes in sardine (Sardina pilchardus) muscle during iced storage: Investigation by DRIFT spectroscopy

Diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform (DRIFT) spectroscopy has been used for the first time to evaluate the postmortem changes in structure of components from sardine muscle in relation to quality loss. Sardines (Sardina pilchardus) were stored in ice for up to thirteen days. The spectroscopic study was focussed on the structural changes produced on the lipids and proteins.     

RS-102221: a novel high affinity and selective, 5-HT2C receptor antagonist

The 5-HT2C receptor is one of three closely related receptor subtypes in the 5-HT2 receptor family. 5-HT2A and 5-HT2B selective antagonists have been described. However, no 5-HT2C selective antagonists have yet been disclosed. As part of an effort to further explore the function of 5-HT2C receptors, we have developed a selective 5-HT2C receptor antagonist, RS-102221 (a benzenesulfonamide of 8-[5-(5-amino-2,4-dimethoxyphenyl) 5-oxopentyl]-1,3,8-triazaspiro[4.5]decane-2,4-dione). This compound exhibited nanomolar affinity for human (pKi = 8.4) and rat (pKi = 8.5) 5-HT2C receptors. The compound also demonstrated nearly 100-fold selectivity for the 5-HT2C receptor as compared to the 5-HT2A and 5-HT2B receptors. RS-102221 acted as an antagonist in a cell-based microphysiometry functional assay (pA2 = 8.1) and had no detectable intrinsic efficacy. Consistent with its action as a 5-HT2C receptor antagonist, daily dosing with RS-102221 (2 mg/kg intraperitoneal) increased food-intake and weight-gain in rats. Surprisingly, RS-102221 failed to reverse the hypolocomotion induced by the 5-HT2 receptor agonist 1-(3-chlorophenyl)piperazine (m-CPP). It is concluded that RS-102221 is the first selective, high affinity 5-HT2C receptor antagonist to be described.     

Isolation of a hydroxytyrosol-rich extract from olive leaves (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Olea Europaea</Emphasis> L.) and evaluation of its antioxidant properties and bioactivity

In this research, a phenol extract of high hydroxytyrosol (OLPE) content was obtained from olive leaves (Olea europaea L.), and subsequently tested under different contexts. The method used to obtain the OLPE basically involved two steps: the use of strongly-acid aqueous steam, generated from 10% HCl (v/v) at 100°C, to directly hydrolyse the native complex phenols from integral olive leaves, and OLPE recovery by liquid–liquid extraction with ethyl acetate. Hydrolysis time was 1 h. Finally, the dried extract was dissolved in distilled water. The OLPE total phenols were determined by Folin–Ciocalteu’s method and by HPLC analysis. Hydroxytyrosol was about 92% of the total phenols present in OLPE, and the yield was about 0.2% on fresh leaves. OLPE showed antioxidant effects on different food lipids and did not inhibit lactic acid bacteria growth; however, it showed cytotoxicity on NIH/3T3 fibroblasts and human umbilical vein endothelial cells at concentrations higher than 0.32 mM (as hydroxytyrosol).     

Study of some factors involved in ethanal production during alcoholic fermentation

The influence of temperature, turbidity and oxygen uptakes to the musts on the production of ethanal by yeasts, during the alcoholic fermentation (AF), has been studied. The aim was to evaluate how increasing and controlling the production of this molecule, in order to anticipate the reactions between anthocyanins and flavans from the second half of the AF. This concerns, in particular, those winemaking techniques consisting in a temporarily separate fermentation of a part of the must (35–40% of the total mass), that is drained before the start of the AF. The experimental design was a complete factorial plan with three factors upon two levels (T = 18 °C and 22 °C; with or without oxygen; turbidity of 30 and 120 NTU); data were elaborated with 3-ways ANOVA. Temperature proved to be the main factor influencing ethanal production during AF: higher temperatures (22 °C versus 18 °C) cause an increase of the ethanal content during the first days of fermentation; after having reached 6–7% of ethanal, the effect is inverted. The influence of turbidity is less important, and it's synergic with the effect of temperature. Oxygen has a detrimental effect on the production of ethanal only at the beginning of the AF, while later, in presence of ethanol, it promotes it through a chemical way.