Analysis of Energy Saving Achievable through Solar Photovoltaic Systems on School Roofs： A Case of the City of Rome

Embracing renewable energy technology makes a lot of sense for the public sectors and schools as it meets the government sustainability goals and provides a financially viable means of achieving carbon savings while offering income potential. This study is aimed to quantify the achievable energy saving by spread use ofphotovoltaic systems on public building stock in the city of Rome. The installation of PV （photovoltaic） systems in the historic center depends on the feasibility conditions, generally more complex compared to the cases examined in the consolidated city, because they require compliance with the formal and aesthetic characteristics of the buildings, so the choice must be made between compatible components, which allow to minimize the transformation. The suburbs are characterized by large plane roofs in bad conditions and belonging to isolated buildings, so the useful surface, according to shading condition, offers a big potential for renewable technologies. The research provides an evaluation of maximum production of solar energy and the subsequent energy saving and reduction of greenhouse gasses, using parametric data, and an evaluation of the cost-effectiveness, with a rough calculation of return on investment.     

Superhydrophobic SLA 3D printed materials modified with nanoparticles biomimicking the hierarchical structure of a rice leaf

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The PDE4 Inhibitor Tanimilast Restrains the Tissue-Damaging Properties of Human Neutrophils

Neutrophils, the most abundant subset of leukocytes in the blood, play a pivotal role in host response against invading pathogens. However, in respiratory diseases, excessive infiltration and activation of neutrophils can lead to tissue damage. Tanimilast-international non-proprietary name of CHF6001—is a novel inhaled phosphodiesterase 4 (PDE4) inhibitor in advanced clinical development for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a chronic inflammatory lung disease where neutrophilic inflammation plays a key pathological role. Human neutrophils from healthy donors were exposed to pro-inflammatory stimuli in the presence or absence of tanimilast and budesonide—a typical inhaled corticosteroid drug-to investigate the modulation of effector functions including adherence to endothelial cells, granule protein exocytosis, release of extracellular DNA traps, cytokine secretion, and cell survival. Tanimilast significantly decreased neutrophil-endothelium adhesion, degranulation, extracellular DNA traps casting, and cytokine secretion. In contrast, it promoted neutrophil survival by decreasing both spontaneous apoptosis and cell death in the presence of pro-survival factors. The present work suggests that tanimilast can alleviate the severe tissue damage caused by massive recruitment and activation of neutrophils in inflammatory diseases such as COPD.     

GPU-based parallel vertex substitution algorithm for the p-median problem

We introduce a GPU-based parallel vertex substitution (pVS) algorithm for the p-median problem using the CUDA architecture by NVIDIA. pVS is developed based on the best profit search algorithm, an implementation of vertex substitution (VS), that is shown to produce reliable solutions for p-median problems. In our approach, each candidate solution in the entire search space is allocated to a separate thread, rather than dividing the search space into parallel subsets. This strategy maximizes the usage of GPU parallel architecture and results in a significant speedup and robust solution quality. Computationally, pVS reduces the worst case complexity from sequential VS’s O(p · n²) to O(p · (n ? p)) on each thread by parallelizing computational tasks on GPU implementation. We tested the performance of pVS on two sets of numerous test cases (including 40 network instances from OR-lib) and compared the results against a CPU-based sequential VS implementation. Our results show that pVS achieved a speed gain ranging from 10 to 57 times over the traditional VS in all test network instances.     

Alcohol-aversion therapy: Relation between strength of aversion and abstinence.

Assessed the degree of alcohol aversion in 60 alcoholics (aged 21–60 yrs) who received emetic alcohol-aversion therapy. Based on prior aversion-therapy research, it was predicted that aversion therapy would result in the following changes in response to alcoholic, but not to nonalcoholic, flavors: (1) decreased consumption in taste tests, (2) more negative flavor ratings, (3) overt behavioral indicants of aversion (e.g., grimacing), and (4) increased tachycardic response. A positive correlation between posttreatment tachycardic response to alcohol and number of days to the first drink was also predicted. Results support these predictions. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stepwise periodic distillation—I: Total reflux operation

The theoretical predictions of doubled overall efficiency for plate distillation columns operated in the controlled cycling mode have not been confirmed by pilot scale experiments. In an attempt to circumvent the hydrodynamic problems causing this failure, we have found a new periodic operating mode where the liquid flow is manipulated directly, and not indirectly through pulsations of the vapour flow rate (as in controlled cycling).In this paper we present the theory of stepwise periodic distillation, under assumptions allowing a comparison with known results for controlled cycling. We show that the two processes have the same asymptotic efficiencies for large values of the number of trays while periodic stepwise distillation is slightly more efficient than controlled cycling for a finite number of trays     

The effect of B‐doping on the electrical conductivity of polymer‐derived Si(B)OC ceramics

In this work the room temperature electrical conductivity of Si(B)OC glasses made via polymer pyrolysis at 1200°C and 1400°C (maximum temperature) and having different amount of boron was measured. When B content is increased from zero (pure SiOC glass) up to B/Si=0.5 the electrical conductivity increases in 2 orders of magnitude from 4.09±0.64×10^?5 up to 2.93±1.91×10^?3 with a corresponding decrease in the activation energy from about 1.08 to 0.51 eV. This results shows for the first time that the electrical conductivity of Si‐based polymer‐derived ceramics can be controlled by the amount of the doping element. The structure of the Si(B)OC glasses has been studied with different techniques including FT‐IR, XRD and Raman spectroscopy. The Raman study indicates that B partially substitutes C into the sp² C planes of the free carbon phase forming trigonal BC₃ units. Accordingly, the evolution of the electrical properties with the B content has been correlated with the corresponding structural evolution and a hypothesis is presented to rationalize the role of boron on the electrical conductivity of SiOBC glasses.     

The use of modeling to understand the impact of screening on U.S. mortality: examples from mammography and PSA testing

Surveillance data represent a vital resource for understanding the impact of cancer control interventions on the population cancer burden. However, population cancer trends are a complex product of many factors, and estimating the contribution of any one of these factors can be challenging. Surveillance modeling is a technique for estimating the contribution of one or more interventions of interest to trends in disease incidence and mortality. In this article, we present several approaches to surveillance modeling of cancer screening interventions. We classify models as biological or epidemiological, depending on whether they model the full unobservable aspects of disease onset and progression, or models which reduce the complex process to simpler terms by summarizing portions of the disease process using mostly observed population level measures. We also describe differences between macrolevel models, microsimulation models and mechanistic models. We discuss procedures for model calibration and validation, and methods for presenting model results which are robust with respect to certain types of biased model estimates. As examples, we present several models of the impact of mammography screening on breast cancer mortality, and PSA screening on prostate cancer mortality. Both these examples are appropriate uses of surveillance modeling, even though for mammography there is extensive (although somewhat controversial) randomized trial evidence, whereas for PSA this biomarker has seen extensive use as a screening test prior to any controlled trial evidence of its efficacy. Some of the models presented here were developed as part of the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Intervention and Surveillance Modeling Network.     

Instructional compensation for age-related cognitive declines: Effects of goal specificity in maze learning.

The differential effects of goal specificity on maze learning among 40 young adults and 40 old adults were investigated. Participants had to navigate through a computerized training-maze task. The finish point of the maze could be presented either as a specific location or in more general terms. After solving the maze problem participants were required to solve the same problem again, either by moving from start to finish or backward from finish to start. The hypotheses that the presence or absence of a specific goal would disproportionately compromise or enhance, respectively, elderly people's performance were confirmed. Although young adults outperformed old participants in all conditions, these differences were much smaller in the nonspecific goal conditions. These results suggest that instruction based on cognitive load theory (J. Sweller, J. J. G. Van Merri?nboer, & F. Paas, 1998) can compensate for age-related cognitive declines. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)