Search results for " Index"

Farming Efficiency and the Survival of Valuable Agro-Ecosystems: A Case Study of Rice Farming in European Mediterranean Wetlands

2009

Beyond the conventional role of providing food, rice farming in European Mediterranean wetlands performs a valuable non-marketable function related to the provision of environmental services. Rice and biodiversity are jointly produced, so that provision of flooded-rice-fields based environmental services depends crucially on private profitability of rice farming. Recent reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and increasing access of third party countries to the domestic European market are challenging the competitiveness of European rice growers. This paper combines conventional competitiveness indicators and non-parametric efficiency analysis to ascertain the economic profitabilit…

1981

Refractive indices and refractive index increments of the system polystyrene/trans-decalin were measured under pressures up to 500 bar and at temperatures between 20 and 60°C. The measurements were performed with a new, recently designed interferometer. The results demonstrate a sufficient agreement of the refractive index values measured at different temperatures and pressures with the equations of Eykman and Gladstone-Dale whereas the Lorenz-Lorentz equation indicates larger deviations. The experimental data of the refractive index increment follow none of the refractive index mixture rules. It is therefore recommended to determine refractive index increments at different pressures experi…

Refractive index of GaTe under high pressure

2000

In this paper we describe two experiments, in the near- and mid-infrared, designed to investigate the evolution under pressure of the GaTe refractive index for polarization parallel and perpendicular to the crystallographic c-axis (in the layer plane). The refractive index dispersion for both light polarizations has been determined up to 5.5 GPa. It is found that the refractive index increases faster in the direction perpendicular to the c-axis than along the c-axis. To find out the origin of such a difference we used a Phillips-Van Vechten model and arrived at the conclusion that it is due to the different pressure behaviour of the Penn gap for each polarization.

Numerical 3D study of FZ growth: dependence on growth parameters and melt instability

2001

Three-dimensional modelling of the floating zone (needle-eye) crystal growth process is carried out to analyse numerically the stability of the melt flow and the influence of the crystal rotation rate and inductor slit width on the 3D flow field and on the grown crystal resistivity. The unsteadiness of the melt is simulated and it is found that for the considered growth parameters a steady-state flow can be a reasonable approximation to the unsteady melt motion. The parametric studies have shown that increasing the rotation rate essentially changes the flow pattern and weakens the rotational striations, while the inductor slit width has a more local influence on these characteristics.

Innovative modelling techniques in computer vision

1996

Abstract The paper is concerned with two of main research activities currently carried on at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence lab of DIE. The first part deals with hybrid artificial vision models, intended to provide object recognition and classification capabilities to an autonomous intelligen system. In this framework, a system recovering 3-D shape information from grey-level images of a scene, building a geometric representation of the scene in terms of superquadrics at the geometric level, and reasoning about the scene at the symbolic level is described. In the second part, attention is focused on automatic indexing of image databases. JACOB, a prototypal system allowing…

A Self-Powered Long-range Wireless IoT Device based on LoRaWAN

2020

In this article, we propose a self-powered long-range wireless Internet-of-Things (IoT) device based on Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) with various sensing capabilities. The nodes are designed based on ambient energy harvesting in such a way that these are self-sustainable throughout the components’ lifespan. Also, these nodes can be deployed on a large scale and are maintenance-free. In addition, these nodes can be deployed in remote places where the accessibility is limited, and maintenance is difficult. The wireless sensor nodes can be deployed both in indoor and outdoor environments with sufficient light levels for the solar panel, such as indoor lights in the indoor environment…

Design, realization, and testing of a SPR biosensing system for wine quality monitoring

2007

A complete innovative and portable, for on-field operation, Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) biosensing system for wine quality monitoring was designed, realized and tested; the system takes advantage of the innovative module Spreeta™, an integrated transducer designed by Texas Instruments able to recognize the Surface Resonance Phenomena and to represent it through electrical signals. The system, based on an 8 bit microprocessor board, acquires through a 12 bit A/D converter, elaborates and sends to a PC data from the Spreeta™ sensor. A proprietary high-level software calculates the refractive index related to biological solution flowing on the surface sensor and lets to detect suitable sub…

Blind Robust 3-D Mesh Watermarking Based on Mesh Saliency and QIM Quantization for Copyright Protection

2019

International audience; Due to the recent demand of 3-D models in several applications like medical imaging, video games, among others, the necessity of implementing 3-D mesh watermarking schemes aiming to protect copyright has increased considerably. The majority of robust 3-D watermark-ing techniques have essentially focused on the robustness against attacks while the imperceptibility of these techniques is still a real issue. In this context, a blind robust 3-D mesh watermarking method based on mesh saliency and Quantization Index Modulation (QIM) for Copyright protection is proposed. The watermark is embedded by quantifying the vertex norms of the 3-D mesh using QIM scheme since it offe…

RISK AVERSION IN THE BOARD ROOM. AN ANALYTICAL APPROACH ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE OF GERMAN STOCK-LISTED COMPANIES

2016

According to the agency theory, a positive relationship between company performance and good corporate governance should exist. A broader study of the author of this paper examines a sample of German stock-listed companies whereas Germany can be seen as one of the most highly regulated countries concerning corporate governance. The overall purpose of the author’s study is to analyze the effect of supervisory board characteristics and procedures on firm performance. Several corporate governance variables such as number of committees, board independency, supervisory board compensation, personal risk liability, etc. are examined regarding their effects on firm performance in terms of firm grow…

Tear <sup>1</sup>H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance-Based Metabolomics Application to the Molecular Diagnosis of Aqueous Tear Deficiency and Me…

2020

<b><i>Purpose:</i></b> Meibomian gland dysfunction (MGD) is a major cause of signs and symptoms related to dry eyes (DE) and eyelid inflammation. We investigated the composition of human tears by metabolomic approaches in patients with aqueous tear deficiency and MGD. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> Participants in this prospective, case-control pilot study were split into patients with aqueous tear deficiency and MGD (DE-MGD [<i>n</i> = 15]) and healthy controls (CG; <i>n</i> = 20). Personal interviews, ocular surface disease index (OSDI), and ophthalmic examinations were performed. Reflex tears collected by capillarity were pr…