Energy performance building evaluation in Mediterranean countries: Comparison between software simulations and operating rating simulation

The European Community introduced the energy certificate of buildings to reduce the energy consumption in buildings and emanated some standards in order to publicize the energy buildings certificate procedure. Consequently, to calculate energy performance of buildings (EPB), many numerical codes have been developed, which take into account several parameters in static or dynamic conditions.     

Stable Alignment of Tautomers at Room Temperature in Porphyrin 2D Layers

A major challenge in molecular electronics is to develop logic devices based on a truly intramolecular switching mechanism. Recently, a new type of molecular device has been proposed where the switching characteristic is mediated by the bistability in the position of the two hydrogen atoms which can occupy different, energetically equivalent positions (tautomerization) in the inner cavity of porphyrins and naphthalocyanines. Up to now, such a reaction has only been exploited at low temperatures and induced or detected through atomic scale manipulation. In addition, the unpredictability of the tautomer orientation currently excludes molecular interconnection to functional electronic circuits. Here, full evidence is provided that, following a newly proposed growth strategy, 2D layers of metal‐free tetraphenylporphyrins (H₂TPP) show frozen tautomerization even at room temperature on macroscopic domains, with the H atoms aligned along a direction settled a priori. This behavior is ascribed to the buckling of the molecule, anchored to the substrate, which removes the degeneracy between the two tautomer alignments. On this basis, a new way to exploit uniaxially oriented H₂TPP tautomers in a first elementary logic device is proposed.     

Copy-move forgery detection and localization by means of robust clustering with J-Linkage

Understanding if a digital image is authentic or not, is a key purpose of image forensics. There are several different tampering attacks but, surely, one of the most common and immediate one is copy-move. A recent and effective approach for detecting copy-move forgeries is to use local visual features such as SIFT. In this kind of methods, SIFT matching is often followed by a clustering procedure to group keypoints that are spatially close. Often, this procedure could be unsatisfactory, in particular in those cases in which the copied patch contains pixels that are spatially very distant among them, and when the pasted area is near to the original source. In such cases, a better estimation of the cloned area is necessary in order to obtain an accurate forgery localization. In this paper a novel approach is presented for copy-move forgery detection and localization based on the J-Linkage algorithm, which performs a robust clustering in the space of the geometric transformation. Experimental results, carried out on different datasets, show that the proposed method outperforms other similar state-of-the-art techniques both in terms of copy-move forgery detection reliability and of precision in the manipulated patch localization.     

选择合适的太阳能电池输出功率测试系统

太阳能产业的成长增加了对太阳能电池(及太阳能模组)测试和测量解决方案的需求,而且随着太阳能电池尺寸的增大和效率的提高,电池测试需要运用更大的电流和更高的功率水平,这就要求采用更加灵活的测试设备.     

Causal cross-spectral analysis of heart rate and blood pressure variability for describing the impairment of the cardiovascular control in neurally mediated syncope

A causal approach to the calculation of coherence and transfer function between systolic pressure (SP) and RR interval variability was applied in eight patients and eight control subjects during prolonged tilt test for investigating the impairment of cardiovascular control related to neurally mediated syncope. The causal analysis showed a depressed baroreflex regulation in resting patients, with reduced gain and increased latency from SP to RR, and a drop of the baroreflex coupling immediately before syncope. These findings, which were not elicited by traditional cross-spectral analysis, strongly suggest the use of the causal approach for the study of syncope mechanisms.     

SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic Tracing in Italy Highlights Lineages with Mutational Burden in Growing Subsets

Tracing the appearance and evolution of virus variants is essential in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we focus on SARS-CoV-2 spread in Italian patients by using viral sequences deposited in public databases and a tracing procedure which is used to monitor the evolution of the pandemic and detect the spreading, within the infected population of emergent sub-clades with a potential positive selection. Analyses of a collection of monthly samples focused on Italy highlighted the appearance and evolution of all the main viral sub-trees emerging at the end of the first year of the pandemic. It also identified additional expanding subpopulations which spread during the second year (i.e., 2021). Three-dimensional (3D) modelling of the main amino acid changes in mutated viral proteins, including ORF1ab (nsp3, nsp4, 2’-o-ribose methyltransferase, nsp6, helicase, nsp12 [RdRp]), N, ORF3a, ORF8, and spike proteins, shows the potential of the analysed structural variations to result in epistatic modulation and positive/negative selection pressure. These analyzes will be of importance to the early identification of emerging clades, which can develop into new “variants of concern” (i.e., VOC). These analyses and settings will also help SARS-CoV-2 coronet genomic centers in other countries to trace emerging worldwide variants.     

Identification of oil palm breeding lines producing oils with low acid values

In the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.), an active endogenous lipase is responsible for the massive release of free fatty acids (FFA) in the mesocarp of fruits at maturity. This can lead to the production of oils with unacceptable acid values. We have investigated the lipase activities in 39 genotypes of oil palm presently used in breeding programs. While most E. guineensis genotypes exhibited high lipase activity values, four of them with negligible activities were identified. We analyzed in situ lipolysis in the mesocarp upon severe wounding of fruits. The FFA content of high‐lipase fruits ranged from 17 to 55%, while all low‐lipase fruits contained less than 7.5% FFA. The analysis of oil from fallen overripe fruits indicated that all low‐lipase genotypes contained less than 1.2% FFA (oil acidity <5% FFA, FAO‐WHO international norms), while all but one high‐lipase genotypes had FFA contents much higher than the acceptable standards. Because the identified low‐lipase lines are of high agronomical value and at least one of them is an elite genotype, it will soon be possible to provide farmers with new low‐lipase oil palm lines allowing significant savings on labor costs, without any need for further breeding.     

The fundamentals of flame treatment for the surface activation of polyolefin polymers - A review

This paper aims to provide an exhaustive and comprehensive overview on flame treatment as a valuable technique for improving the surface properties of polymers, especially polyolefins. It starts with a brief historical excursus on the origin of flame treatment, and the second section deals with the major fundamentals of flame chemistry, with a special focus on the combustion process and mechanism of surface activation. The most important parameters influencing the extent of the oxidation reaction along with relevant practical notes are discussed in the third section. The concluding section outlines how the most significant features of flame treatment can be profitably used to improve the wettability and adhesion properties of polyolefin surfaces, especially from the perspective of developing novel composite solutions such as polyolefins/bio-based coating pairs intended for many different applications.