Loss processes affecting submicrometer particles in a house heavily affected by road traffic emissions

The fraction of outdoor aerosol that penetrates into indoor environments plays an important role in determining the contribution of outdoor particles to the total lung dose of particles in human exposure. The objective of this study was to investigate the physical processes affecting migration of outdoor traffic particles into indoor environments. Particle number size distributions were measured by a fast mobility particle sizer system in both indoor and outdoor environments of a house located in close proximity to a busy street in Bologna (Italy) in the period February–April 2012. Indoor to outdoor (I/O) ratios for submicron particle number concentrations showed strong dependence on particle size and meteorological conditions. The loss rates of particles due to deposition, coagulation, and evaporation were determined using dynamic mass balance and coagulation models. Higher loss rates were found for small particles (nucleation and Aitken mode) indoors than for larger particles (accumulation mode). The coagulation and evaporation processes made a significant contribution to the loss of traffic nanoparticles indoors, especially during the day time. Application of positive matrix factorization to the indoor and outdoor particle size distributions showed a substantial loss of traffic-generated nucleation mode particles in the indoor environment, with evaporation playing a major role.

Copyright © 2017 American Association for Aerosol Research     

Neuro-fuzzy clustering techniques for complex acoustic scenarios

An apparatus is described capable of detecting a specific sound among a sound mixture and of identifying the environmental acoustic scenario, to automatically adapt the apparatus to changing environmental conditions. Such an apparatus could be useful, for example, in the design of an ASR system robust to environmental noise. Starting from a time-frequency representation of the incoming signal, neuro-fuzzy clustering is performed on proper features extracted from time-frequency objects.     

PROXIMA: PROlog eXecutIon MAchine

The design and the technological aspects involved in the integration of a high-performance Prolog machine on silicon are described. Many Prolog machines have been implemented by using a large number of boards. Consequently they are expensive, cumbersome, and not yet achievable by industrial standards. There have been many attempts in the US, Japan, and Europe to integrate Prolog engines in silicon, in order to increase performance. The described processor, PROXIMA (PROlog eXecutIon MAchine), is a VLSI Prolog engine suitable to be added onto a commercial workstation. The PROXIMA chip set has been integrated in silicon using a double-metal 0.8 μm n-well SGS-Thomson proprietary CMOS technology