Chemical characterization of a traditional honey-based Sardinian product: Abbamele

The first chemical characterization of abbamele, a traditional honey decoction from Sardinia (Italy) is hereby reported. Water content (from 17.7% to 27.7%), electrical conductivity (from 0.19 to 0.81 mS cm⁻¹), pH (from 3.21 to 3.92), free acidity (from 26.1 to 87.6 meq kg⁻¹), invertase activity (from 0 to 1.02 U kg⁻¹), 5-(hydroxymethyl)-2-furaldehyde, HMF (from 881 to 4776 mg kg⁻¹), total polyphenols (from 188 to 984 mg kg⁻¹) and free amino acid contents of thirteen abbamele samples, from industrial and traditional producers, were obtained in an attempt to compare this traditional product with honey and to study the relationship between its main features and the production procedures. The long thermal treatment involved in the production of abbamele has been identified as the main cause of very low (or absent) invertase activity and free amino acid content as well as the very high content of HMF.     

Upgrading biomass wastes in chemical technology. Humic acid‐like matter isolated from compost as chemical auxiliary for textile dyeing

BACKGROUND: In the context of the modern concern regarding rapid consumption and low availability of fossil sources of energy and chemicals, urban and agro‐industrial sources of chemicals represent interesting environmentally friendly alternatives. A recent paper has shown that a humic acid‐like material extracted from urban and green wastes compost exhibits very good surfactant properties. A large number of technological applications could possibly use this material as a chemical auxiliary. This paper reports on the performance of the material as a chemical auxiliary in textile dyeing. RESULTS: The compost‐isolated humic acid‐like bio‐surfactant is shown to perform in nylon 6 microfiber dyeing by water soluble and insoluble dyes as well as and more conveniently than commercial sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) and sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (SDBS). With both types of dye the bio‐surfactant allows the same quality of dyed product as the synthetic surfactants do, but at lower additive concentration. From process cost and environmental impact points of view, the bio‐surfactant has the advantages of operating at much lower additive concentrations and should be available at significantly lower cost than the synthetic surfactants. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that biomass wastes may be a low cost renewable source of chemicals with friendly environmental impact. Such a perspective implies economic and environmental benefits deriving from a new waste management technology that considers biomass waste as a source of chemicals, and from lower oil consumption in the manufacture of synthetic surfactants. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry     

Essential design and fabrication considerations for the reliable performance of an electrothermal MEMS microgripper

Microsystem Technologies - Over the past years, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) have become a vital component within a wide range of technologies, making the study of their performance and...     

The use of videos in road safety training: Cognitive and emotional effects

The aim of the study was to evaluate the use of videos in educational programs for improving road safety. Particularly, we evaluated the cognitive and emotional effects of viewing videos taken from cameras placed along Italian highways and showing car crashes or traffic flow images.     

A grid based software architecture for delivery of adaptive and personalised learning experiences

This paper is centred on one of the main results of the ELeGI project, namely its software architecture for the delivery of personalised formal-learning experiences. The architecture has been designed and developed: (1) taking into account a general model for the personalisation of learning experiences, allowing us to obtain a solution that is flexible with respect to the pedagogies, and (2) on top of service oriented grid technologies, allowing us to obtain several advantages in the process of creation and delivery of personalised learning experience like, for instance, ubiquitous and seamless access to heterogeneous learning resources distributed over the network. In order to validate our result, the first prototype of the ELeGI architecture has been deployed on a virtual organisation consisting of three geographically distributed nodes. Each node of the VO provides services and learning resources that have been adopted in the creation and delivery of a personalised learning experience about the Torricelli’s law and based on the virtual scientific experiment model. The case of study has been successfully executed and has given us a proof of our assumptions related to the added value of the service oriented grid mainly in terms of: (1) capabilities to access educational resources distributed over the network, that is relevant in achieving the personalisation of learning experiences, and (2) high level of dynamicity and adaptiveness in the creation and delivery processes of a personalised learning experience.

Identification of ferroresonance based on S-transform and support vector machine

The aim of this paper is to develop a method based on S-transform and Support Vector Machine (SVM) for ferroresonance detection. Using this method ferroresonance can be discriminate from other transients such as capacitor switching, load switching and transformer switching. S-transform (ST) is used for decomposition of signals, feature selection is done by Kernel Principal Component Analysis (KPCA). SVM is used for classification. Ferroresonance data and other transients were obtained by simulation using EMTP program. Results show that the proposed procedure is efficient in identifying ferroresonance from other events.     

MicroMAIS: executing and orchestrating Web services on constrained mobile devices

Mobile devices with their more and more powerful resources allow the development of mobile information systems in which services are not only provided by traditional systems but also autonomously executed and controlled in the mobile devices themselves. Services distributed on autonomous mobile devices allow both the development of cooperative applications without a back‐end infrastructure and the development of applications blending distributed and centralized services. In this paper, we propose MicroMAIS: an integrated platform for supporting the execution of Web service‐based applications natively on a mobile device. The MicroMAIS platform is composed of mAS and μ‐BPEL. The former allows the execution of a single Web service, whereas the latter permits the orchestration of several Web services according to the WS‐BPEL standard. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于腕部姿态的帕金森病用药后开-关期检测

针对医疗普适场景下的帕金森病患者高精度用药开-关期检测问题,提出基于腕部姿态的帕金森病开-关期检测方法.利用佩戴在手腕处的运动传感器数据进行姿态解算,得到腕部姿态信息特征,作为卷积神经网络输入进行帕金森病开-关期状态分类. 在医院临床患者测试数据上进行的对比实验表明,与采用运动传感器原始数据的最优结果相比,采用姿态信息能够提升20.3%的检测准确率;与当前最优的网络结构相比,该方法所采用的卷积神经网络在保持相似检测准确率（88.7%）的前提下,将模型参数量降低90.4%. 在医院临床患者自由活动数据上进行的实验表明,该方法能够在非限定动作下预测患者开-关期状态,达到开期91.5%和关期94.4%的准确率.