Search results for " del"
showing 10 items of 24720 documents
II) Wood pellets for home heating can be considered environmentally friendly fuels? Heavy metals determination by inductively coupled plasma-optical …
2016
Abstract The aim of the present study was to determine the concentrations of twelve potentially hazardous elements in wood pellet ashes obtained by the combustion of 13 pellet brands for sale in Italy, the impact of adding the ashes to soils and health risk of operator due to dust exposure. Samples were analysed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry. The concentrations of heavy metals in ashes from stoves ranged from 0.41 to 7.2 mg kg − 1 for As, from 1.3 to 12 mg kg − 1 for Sb, from 1.8 to 12 mg kg − 1 for Zn, from 0.23 to 0.8 mg kg − 1 for Pb, from 0.18 to 2.8 mg kg − 1 for Ni, from 0.09 to 1.0 mg kg − 1 for Cd, from 0.46 to 3.4 mg kg − 1 for Cr, from 0.94 to 2.7 mg …
Fast pyrolysis of hot-water-extracted and delignified silver birch (Betula pendula) sawdust by Py-GC/MS
2017
The thermochemical behavior of birch (Betula pendula) sawdust both untreated and after various chemical treatments (hot-water extraction, delignification, and hot-water extraction followed by delignification) was investigated by pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC/MS). In each case, major GC-amenable condensable products were classified into several compound groups, and the formation of these monomer-related fragments from feedstock samples with varying mass portions of the structural constituents (cellulose, hemicelluloses, and lignin) were determined at 500 °C and 700 °C at hold times of 5 s and 20 s. The formation of pyrolysis products was shown to be characteristically…
A new strategy to maximize organic matter valorization in municipalities: combination of urban wastewater with kitchen food waste and its treatment w…
2017
[EN] The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of treating the kitchen food waste (FW) jointly with urban wastewater (WW) in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) by anaerobic membrane technology (AnMBR). The experience was carried out in six different periods in an AnMBR pilot-plant for a total of 536 days, varying the SRT, HRT and the food waste penetration factor (PF) of food waste disposers. The results showed increased methane production of up to 190% at 70 days SRT, 24 hours HRT and 80% PF, compared with WW treatment only. FW COD and biodegradability were higher than in WW, so that the incorporation of FW into the treatment increases the organic load and the methane producti…
Surrogate models for the compressive strength mapping of cement mortar materials
2021
Despite the extensive use of mortar materials in constructions over the last decades, there is not yet a robust quantitative method available in the literature, which can reliably predict their strength based on the mix components. This limitation is attributed to the highly nonlinear relation between the mortar’s compressive strength and the mixed components. In this paper, the application of artificial intelligence techniques for predicting the compressive strength of mortars is investigated. Specifically, Levenberg–Marquardt, biogeography-based optimization, and invasive weed optimization algorithms are used for this purpose (based on experimental data available in the literature). The c…
Hankelet-based action classification for motor intention recognition
2017
Powered lower-limb prostheses require a natural, and an easy-to-use, interface for communicating amputee’s motor intention in order to select the appropriate motor program in any given context, or simply to commute from active (powered) to passive mode of functioning. To be widely accepted, such an interface should not put additional cognitive load at the end-user, it should be reliable and minimally invasive. In this paper we present a one such interface based on a robust method for detecting and recognizing motor actions from a low-cost wearable sensor network mounted on a sound leg providing inertial (accelerometer, gyrometer and magnetometer) data in real-time. We assume that the sensor…
Robust link prediction in criminal networks: A case study of the Sicilian Mafia
2020
Abstract Link prediction exercises may prove particularly challenging with noisy and incomplete networks, such as criminal networks. Also, the link prediction effectiveness may vary across different relations within a social group. We address these issues by assessing the performance of different link prediction algorithms on a mafia organization. The analysis relies on an original dataset manually extracted from the judicial documents of operation “Montagna”, conducted by the Italian law enforcement agencies against individuals affiliated with the Sicilian Mafia. To run our analysis, we extracted two networks: one including meetings and one recording telephone calls among suspects, respect…
Body Gestures and Spoken Sentences: A Novel Approach for Revealing User’s Emotions
2017
In the last decade, there has been a growing interest in emotion analysis research, which has been applied in several areas of computer science. Many authors have con- tributed to the development of emotion recognition algorithms, considering textual or non verbal data as input, such as facial expressions, gestures or, in the case of multi-modal emotion recognition, a combination of them. In this paper, we describe a method to detect emotions from gestures using the skeletal data obtained from Kinect-like devices as input, as well as a textual description of their meaning. The experimental results show that the correlation existing between body movements and spoken user sentence(s) can be u…
Selective visual odometry for accurate AUV localization
2015
In this paper we present a stereo visual odometry system developed for autonomous underwater vehicle localization tasks. The main idea is to make use of only highly reliable data in the estimation process, employing a robust keypoint tracking approach and an effective keyframe selection strategy, so that camera movements are estimated with high accuracy even for long paths. Furthermore, in order to limit the drift error, camera pose estimation is referred to the last keyframe, selected by analyzing the feature temporal flow. The proposed system was tested on the KITTI evaluation framework and on the New Tsukuba stereo dataset to assess its effectiveness on long tracks and different illumina…
Simulation Goals and Metrics Identification
2016
Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation (ABMS) is a very useful means for producing high quality models during simulation studies. When ABMS is part of a methodological ap- proach it becomes important to have a method for identifying the objectives of the simulation study in a disciplined fashion. In this work we propose a set of guidelines for properly capturing and representing the goals of the simulations and the metrics, allowing and evaluating the achievement of a simulation objective. We take inspiration from the goal-question-metric approach and with the aid of a specific problem formalization we are able to derive the right questions for relating simulation goals and metrics.
Generative Design for Additively Manufactured Textiles in Orthopaedic Applications
2021
AbstractThe aim of this work is to implement a new process for the design and production of orthopaedic devices to realize entirely by Additive Manufacturing (AM). In particular, a generative algorithm for parametric modelling of flexible structures to use in orthopaedic devices has been developed. The developed modelling algorithm has been applied to a case study based on the design and production of a customized elbow orthosis made by Selective Laser Sintering. The results obtained have demonstrated that the developed algorithm overcomes many drawbacks typical of traditional CAD modelling approaches. FEM simulations have been also performed to validate the design of the orthosis. The new …