Search results for " CRA"

2021

Dystonia, a debilitating neurological movement disorder, is characterized by involuntary muscle contractions and develops from a complex pathophysiology. Graph theoretical analysis approaches have been employed to investigate functional network changes in patients with different forms of dystonia. In this study, we aimed to characterize the abnormal brain connectivity underlying writer's cramp, a focal hand dystonia. To this end, we examined functional magnetic resonance scans of 20 writer's cramp patients (11 females/nine males) and 26 healthy controls (10 females/16 males) performing a sequential finger tapping task with their non-dominant (and for patients non-dystonic) hand. Functional …

Asymmetric decentralisation, economic cycle, regional and local government’s borrowing in Spain

2014

This paper investigates the evolution of sub-central government borrowing in Spain over the period 1996–2011. The arguments and figures provided show that the intense process of political and fiscal decentralisation that took place over the 1990s and 2000s did not lead to higher debt ratios in terms of GDP at these tiers of government until 2007. Although a kind of overspending bias was in effect until the late 2000s, the paper shows that the evolution of GDP and tax revenues provided regional and local governments with enough resources to vigorously pursue their devolved public policy responsibilities and still keep their debt ratios under control. However, since 2008, when the world finan…

Automatic Segmentation and Enhancement of Pavement Cracks Based on 3D Pavement Images

2019

Pavement cracking is a significant symptom of pavement deterioration and deficiency. Conventional manual inspections of road condition are gradually replaced by novel automated inspection systems. As a result, a great amount of pavement surface information is digitized by these systems with a high resolution. With pavement surface data, pavement cracks can be detected using crack detection algorithms. In this paper, a fully automated algorithm for segmenting and enhancing pavement crack is proposed, which consists of four major procedures. First, a preprocessing procedure is employed to remove spurious noise and rectify the original 3D pavement data. Second, crack saliency maps are segmente…

Uptake prediction of nine heavy metals by Eichhornia crassipes grown in irrigation canals: A biomonitoring approach

2021

The principal objective of this study is to generate mathematical regression equations that facilitate the estimation of the extent to which Eichhornia crassipes (C. Mart.) Solms, water hyacinth, absorbs heavy metals (HMs) into four plant organs (laminae, petioles, roots, and stolons). This study considers the absorption of nine HMs (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, and Zn), and the E. crassipes evaluated in this study were located in three irrigation canals in the North Nile Delta in Egypt, with sampling being conducted in both monospecific and homogenous E. crassipes. Samples of both E. crassipes and water were collected on a monthly basis during one growing season. Analysis of the water s…

Characterization of the Etna volcanic emissions through an active biomonitoring technique (moss-bags): Part 2 – Morphological and mineralogical featu…

2013

Volcanic emissions were studied at Mount Etna (Italy) by using moss-bags technique. Mosses were exposed around the volcano at different distances from the active vents to evaluate the impact of volcanic emissions in the atmosphere. Morphology and mineralogy of volcanic particulate intercepted by mosses were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) equipped with energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS). Particles emitted during passive degassing activity from the two active vents, Bocca Nuova and North East Crater (BNC and NEC), were identified as silicates, sulfates and halide compounds. In addition to volcanic particles, we found evidences also of geogenic, anthropogenic and marin…

The performance investigation of viscoelastic hybrid models in vehicle crash event representation

2011

Aurthor's version of a chapter published in the book: Proceedings of the 18th IFAC World Congress 2011. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3182/20110828-6-IT-1002.00284

KNOWN RESIDUAL STRESS SPECIMENS USING OPPOSED INDENTATION

2009

In order to test new theories for residual stress measurement or to test the effects of residual stress on fatigue, fracture, and stress corrosion cracking, a known stress test specimen was designed and then fabricated, modeled, and experimentally validated. To provide a unique biaxial stress state, a 60 mm diameter 10 mm thick disk of 316L stainless steel was plastically compressed through the thickness with an opposing 15 mm diameter hard steel indenters in the center of the disk. For validation, the stresses in the specimen were first mapped using time-of-flight neutron diffraction and Rietveld full pattern analysis. Next, the hoop stresses were mapped on a cross section of two disks usi…

Sustainability for 3DP Operations

2020

Sustainability is an essential consideration in manufacturing, and within this chapter a detailed appraisal is given to sustainability for 3D printing. An in-depth review of existing research is provided, and a cradle-to-grave assessment technique is shown to assess the environmental impact of 3D printed part.

Modeling traffic safety at urban four leg-signalized intersections

2013

According to the state-of-the-art of the methodologies, the development of safety performance functions (SPFs) for road sections and intersections requires the employment of statistical models to predict expected crash frequencies on the basis of traffic volumes and site characteristics to be surveyed and used as input to models. Nevertheless, literature reports several studies on issues deriving from data features or methodological approaches that may invalidate the efficiency of the models and the accuracy of the estimates. Drawing inspiration from the above mentioned considerations, the objective of this study is to develop safety performance functions for a sample of urban four leg-sign…

A preliminary method for the numerical prediction of the behavior of air bubbles in the design of Air Cavity Ships

2016

Air-cavity ships (ACS) are advanced marine vehicles that use air injection under hull to improve the vessel’s hydrodynamic characteristics. Although the concept of drag reduction by supplying gas under the ship’s bottom was proposed in the 19th century by Froude and Laval, at this time there are not many systematic studies on this subject. This paper is a preliminary work with the purpose of being a basic tool for the design of the ACS with computational fluid dynamic methods. The study aims to conduct a series of computational tests to compare the numerical models of bubble with experimental data. The first step of this study was to investigate the behavior of free bubble in water, conside…