Search results for "1707"
showing 10 items of 274 documents
The focal plane assembly for the Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit instrument
2016
This paper summarizes a preliminary design concept for the focal plane assembly of the X-ray Integral Field Unit on the Athena spacecraft, an imaging microcalorimeter that will enable high spectral resolution imaging and point-source spectroscopy. The instrument's sensor array will be a ~ 3840-pixel transition edge sensor (TES) microcalorimeter array, with a frequency domain multiplexed SQUID readout system allowing this large-format sensor array to be operated within the thermal constraints of the instrument's cryogenic system. A second TES detector will be operated in close proximity to the sensor array to detect cosmic rays and secondary particles passing through the sensor array for off…
Effectively and efficiently supporting crowd-enabled databases via NoSQL paradigms
2013
In this paper we provide an overview of the Hints From the Crowd (HFC) project, whose main goal is to build a NoSQL database system for large collections of product reviews; the database is queried by expressing a natural language sentence; the result is a list of products ranked based on the relevance of reviews w.r.t. the natural language sentence. The best ranked products in the result list can be seen as the best hints for the user based on crowd opinions (the reviews). The HFC prototype has been developed as a web application, independent of the particular application domain of the collected product reviews. Queries are performed by evaluating a text-based ranking metric for sets of re…
An automated image analysis methodology for classifying megakaryocytes in chronic myeloproliferative disorders
2008
This work describes an automatic method for discrimination in microphotographs between normal and pathological human megakaryocytes and between two kinds of disorders of these cells. A segmentation procedure has been developed, mainly based on mathematical morphology and wavelet transform, to isolate the cells. The features of each megakaryocyte (e.g. area, perimeter and tortuosity of the cell and its nucleus, and shape complexity via elliptic Fourier transform) are used by a regression tree procedure applied twice: the first time to find the set of normal megakaryocytes and the second to distinguish between the pathologies. The output of our classifier has been compared to the interpretati…
Composite Scaffolds with a Hydrohyapatite Spatial Gradient for Osteochondral Defect Repair
2018
Osteochondral defects derived by traumatic injury or aging related disease are often associated with severe joint pain and progressive loss of joint functions for millions of people worldwide and represent a major challenge for the orthopedic community. Tissue engineering offers new therapeutic approach to repair the osteochondral defects, through the production of scaffolds manufactured to mimic their complex architecture, which consists of cartilage and bone layers. Composite scaffolds based on a PLLA polymeric matrix containing hydroxyapatite (HA) as a filler were prepared through a modified thermally induced phase separation (TIPS) protocol. A suspension was prepared by adding sieved HA…
Eulerian-Eulerian modelling and computational fluid dynamics simulation of wire mesh demisters in MSF plants
2014
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to focus on simulation of wire mesh demisters in multistage flash desalination (MSF) plants. The simulation is made by the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software. Design/methodology/approach – A steady state and two-dimensional (2D) model was developed to simulate the demister. The model employs an Eulerian-Eulerian approach to simulate the flow of water vapor and brine droplets in the demister. The computational domain included three zones, which are the vapor space above and below the demister and the demister. The demister zone was modeled as a tube bank arrange or as a porous media. Findings – Sensitivity analysis of the model showed t…
Gaussian and non-Gaussian stochastic sensitivity analysis of discrete structural systems
2000
Abstract The derivatives of the response of a structural system with respect to the system parameters are termed sensitivities. They play an important role in assessing the effect of uncertainties in the mathematical model of the system and in predicting changes of the response due to changes of the design parameters. In this paper, a time domain approach for evaluating the sensitivity of discrete structural systems to deterministic, as well as to Gaussian or non-Gaussian stochastic input is presented. In particular, in the latter case, the stochastic input has been assumed to be a delta-correlated process and, by using Kronecker algebra extensively, cumulant sensitivities of order higher t…
Flow resistance law under equilibrium bed-load transport conditions
2018
Abstract The uniform flow resistance equation, in the form due to Manning or Darcy-Weisbach, is often applied to determine the stage-discharge relationship of a river cross-section. The application of this equation, namely the slope-area method, allows to indirectly measure by water level readings the corresponding river discharge. In this paper, a recently deduced flow resistance equation for open channel flow was tested during conditions of equilibrium bed-load transport. First the flow resistance equation was determined by dimensional analysis and applying the condition of incomplete self-similarity for the flow velocity profile. Then the analysis was developed by the following steps: (i…
A coupled Finite Volume–Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics method for incompressible flows
2016
Abstract An hybrid approach is proposed which allows to combine Finite Volume Method (FVM) and Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH). The method is based on the partitioning of the computational domain into a portion discretized with a structured grid of hexahedral elements (the FVM-domain ) and a portion filled with Lagrangian particles (the SPH-domain ), separated by an interface made of triangular elements. A smooth transition between the solutions in the FVM and SPH regions is guaranteed by the introduction of a layer of grid cells in the SPH-domain and of a band of virtual particles in the FVM one (both neighboring the interface), on which the hydrodynamic variables are obtained throug…
Robust stabilisation of 2D state-delayed stochastic systems with randomly occurring uncertainties and nonlinearities
2013
This paper is concerned with the state feedback control problem for a class of two-dimensional (2D) discrete-time stochastic systems with time-delays, randomly occurring uncertainties and nonlinearities. Both the sector-like nonlinearities and the norm-bounded uncertainties enter into the system in random ways, and such randomly occurring uncertainties and nonlinearities obey certain mutually uncorrelated Bernoulli random binary distribution laws. Sufficient computationally tractable linear matrix inequality–based conditions are established for the 2D nonlinear stochastic time-delay systems to be asymptotically stable in the mean-square sense, and then the explicit expression of the desired…
Mode-superposition correction method for deterministic and stochastic analysis of structural systems
2001
The role played by the modal analysis in the framework of structural dynamics is fundamental from both deterministic and stochastic point of view. However the accuracy obtained by means of the classical modal analysis is not always satisfactory. Therefore it is clear the importance of methods able to correct the modal response in such a way to obtain the required accuracy. Many methods have been proposed in the last years but they are meaningful only when the forcing function is expressed by an analytical function. Moreover in stochastic analysis they fail for white noise excitation. In the paper a method able to give a very accurate response for both deterministic and stochastic input is p…