Search results for "Bust"
showing 10 items of 1000 documents
Deep uncertainty in humanitarian logistics operations: decision-making challenges in responding to large-scale natural disasters
2019
Humanitarian logistics operations perform challenging tasks while responding to large-scale natural disasters. Decision makers at different stages of humanitarian operations exploit numerous problem-specific decision-making models or tools. When synchronising the outputs (decisions) from models into a unified solution, the situation becomes critical because of the lack of consensus on objectives and the availability of model alternatives with uncertainty in the models' key parameters and evaluation of the models' alternative outcomes. Thus, the operational environment becomes complex to respond urgently to humanitarian needs and makes the situation deeply uncertain. In this paper, we inspec…
A Feasibility Analysis of an Electric KERS for Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
2019
In this work, the authors evaluate the energetic and economic advantages connected to the implementation of an electric Kinetic Energy Recovery System (e-KERS) on an internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV). The e-KERS proposed is based on the use of a supercapacitor (SC) as energy storage element, a brushless motor generator unit (MGU) for the conversion of the vehicle kinetic energy into electric energy (and vice versa), and a power converter properly designed to manage the power transfer between SC and MGU. The low complexity of the system proposed, the moderate volume and weight of the components selected for its assembly, together with their immediate availability on the market, make …
On the Energy Efficiency of Dual Prime Mover Pump-Controlled Hydraulic Cylinders
2019
Abstract This paper concerns the energy efficiency of a special class of pump-controlled hydraulic cylinders utilizing two prime movers. The performance of such circuits has been studied previously motivated by their capability of providing an actuator stiffness similar to that of servo valve-controlled systems. This characteristic may improve performance and robustness in applications requiring feedback control. In this paper, the presence of losses similar to that of fluid throttling, in the sense that they occur even in the absence of component inefficiencies, are demonstrated for such circuits and shown to degrade the overall energy efficiency of the system. The conditions under which s…
Lead-Lag-Shaped Interactive Force Estimation by Equivalent Output Injection of Sliding-Mode
2020
Estimation of interactive forces, which are mostly unavailable for direct measurement on the interface between a system and its environment, is an essential task in various motion control applications. This paper proposes an interactive force estimation method, based on the well-known equivalent output injection of the second-order sliding mode. The equivalent output injection is used to obtain a frequency-unshaped quantity that appears as a matched external disturbance and encompasses the interactive forces. Afterwards, a universal lead-lag shaper, depending on dynamics of the motion control system coupled with its environment, is used to extract an interactive force quantity. Once identif…
Uncertainty assessment of sewer sediment erosion modelling
2008
Urban stormwater quality modelling has become a fundamental issue in the evaluation of the receiving water bodies' quality state. Laboratory study as well as field campaigns have widely demonstrated that combined sewer sediments present cohesive-like properties which increase their resistance to erosion. However, only few models take sewer sediments into account considering their rheological properties. In the present paper different sewer sediment erosion models have been tested and their uncertainties have been assessed. The main goal was to discriminate the algorithms with respect to their robustness and the reduction of uncertainty. In order to accomplish such objective the GLUE methodo…
The Design of Secure and Efficient P2PSIP Communication Systems
2010
Recently, both academia and industry have initiated research projects directed on integration of P2PSIP paradigm into communication systems. In this paradigm, P2P network stores most of the network information among participating peers without help of the central servers. The concept of self-configuration, self-establishment greatly improves the robustness of the network system compared with the traditional Client/Server based systems. In this paper, we propose a system architecture for constructing efficient and secure P2PSIP communication systems. The proposed approach includes three-layer hierarchical overlay division, peer identifier assignment, cache based efficiency enhancement, proxy…
Learning the relevant image features with multiple kernels
2009
This paper proposes to learn the relevant features of remote sensing images for automatic spatio-spectral classification with the automatic optimization of multiple kernels. The method consists of building dedicated kernels for different sets of bands, contextual or textural features. The optimal linear combination of kernels is optimized through gradient descent on the support vector machine (SVM) objective function. Since a na¨ive implementation is computationally demanding, we propose an efficient model selection procedure based on kernel alignment. The result is a weight — learned from the data — for each kernel where both relevant and meaningless image features emerge after training. E…
PO-CALC: A novel tool to correct common inconsistencies in the measurement of phenoloxidase activity
2015
Abstract A broad range of physiological and evolutionarily studies requires standard and robust methods to assess the strength and activity of an individual’s immune defense. In insects, this goal is generally reached by spectrophotometrically measuring (pro-) phenoloxidase activity, an enzymatic and non-specific process activated after wounding and parasite infections. However, the literature surprisingly lacks a standard method to calculate these values from spectrophotometer data and thus to be able to compare results across studies. In this study, we demonstrated that nine methods commonly used to extract phenoloxidase activities (1) provide inconsistent results when tested on the same …
Identification of an LPS-Induced Chemo-Attractive Peptide from Ciona robusta
2020
Background: Previously published work has demonstrated that the LPS injection of Ciona robusta leads to the overexpression of a truncated form of an immune-related mRNA (C8short) by means of Ciona robusta (CR) alternative polyadenylation (APA) (CR-APA). Methods: The 3D structure of the C8short-derived Ciona robusta chemo-attractive peptide (CrCP) was evaluated by homology modeling. The biological activity of the CrCP was studied in vitro using a primary human dermal cell line (HuDe). Real-Time PCR was used to investigate the expression levels of genes involved in cell motility. NF-&kappa
Macroelement Model for the Progressive-Collapse Analysis of Infilled Frames
2021
A new multistrut macromodel for the analysis of the progressive-collapse response of infilled reinforced concrete (RC) frames is presented in this paper. The model consists of three struts: two outer infinitely rigid and resistant struts and one inner fiber-section strut. The inclination of the struts as well as the stress-strain response are modulated by two parameters that are obtained by means of analytical correlations provided in the paper. The latter link the geometric and mechanical properties of an infilled frame to the geometric configuration and mechanical response of the equivalent strut model. This confers the model the capability to adapt to consider different collapse configur…