Search results for "Disturbance"
showing 10 items of 232 documents
THE IMPACT OF WARFARE ON THE SOIL ENVIRONMENT
2013
Abstract One of the most dramatic ways humans can affect soil properties is through the performance of military activities. Warfare-induced disturbances to soil are basically of three types – physical, chemical, and biological – and are aimed at causing direct problems to enemies or, more often, are indirect, undesired ramifications. Physical disturbances to soil include sealing due to building of defensive infrastructures, excavation of trenches or tunnels, compaction by traffic of machinery and troops, or cratering by bombs. Chemical disturbances consist of the input of pollutants such as oil, heavy metals, nitroaromatic explosives, organophosphorus nerve agents, dioxins from herbicides, …
Impacts of wood extraction on soil: assessing rutting and soil compaction caused by skidding and forwarding by means of traditional and innovative me…
2021
AbstractIntensive forestry operations may cause soil compaction, plastic soil disturbances and rutting, which are responsible for undesirable effects on soils, vegetation and water bodies. Despite the numerous studies aimed to identify the main factors affecting soil damages, it still remains unclear whether wood extraction methods and driving direction (uphill or downhill) may affect the impacts of forest machines. This research analyses soil compaction and soil penetration resistance as well as rutting from forwarding and skidding using the same farm tractor in up- and downhill wood extraction. Rutting was estimated by 3D soil reconstruction derived by portable laser scanning (PLS) and cl…
Virtual reality in eating disorders
2003
Virtual Reality (VR) is widely used as a therapeutic tool in the field of neuropsychology and also in the treatment of anxiety disorders. In contrast, VR is much less well-known in the area of the eating disorders. The objective of this paper is to draw attention to possible applications of this technology in the treatment of eating disorders and describe pilot work in the area of body image disturbance and binge eating using VR technology. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.
The treatment of the body image disturbances in eating disorders and clinically significant change
2014
Body image disturbance is a significant maintenance and prog-nosis factor in eating disorders. Hence, existing eating disorder treatments can benefit from direct intervention in patients’ body image. This paper in-cludes a controlled study comparing cognitive behavioural treatment for eating disorders with and without a component for body image treatment using virtual reality techniques. The objective of this work was to check if both types of treatment produced a change clinically significant at the end of the treatment and the follow-up to the year, in body image, eating disor-ders and general psychopathology. Thirty-four participants diagnosed with eating disorders were treated and compa…
A Therapist’s Different Style of Intervention in Two Group Treatments
2004
In this paper we compare interventions of the same group analyst in two different groups - a traditional slow-open group of six out-patients with Eating Disorders diagnosis (all female; age: 16-26) and a time-limited, group of eight outpatients (different in age and sex) with organic vision disturbances. Our aim was to see if the same group therapist adopts different therapeutic interpretative interventions in the two groups, depending on the aims of each group and the different patients’ diagnosis. The sessions were recorded, transcribed and coded by the Code of Analysis of the Therapeutic Field Style (SCAT). In the traditional group, the therapist’s intervention style is focused more on …
Trajectory robust control of autonomous quadcopters based on model decoupling and disturbance estimation
2021
In this article, a systematic procedure is given for determining a robust motion control law for autonomous quadcopters, starting from an input–output linearizable model. In particular, the suggested technique can be considered as a robust feedback linearization (FL), where the nonlinear state-feedback terms, which contain the aerodynamic forces and moments and other unknown disturbances, are estimated online by means of extended state observers. Therefore, the control system is made robust against unmodelled dynamics and endogenous as well as exogenous disturbances. The desired closed-loop dynamics is obtained by means of pole assignment. To have a feasible control action, that is, the fo…
Wind gust estimation for precise quasi-hovering control of quadrotor aircraft
2021
Abstract This paper focuses on the control of quadrotor vehicles without wind sensors that are required to accurately track low-speed trajectories in the presence of moderate yet unknown wind gusts. By modeling the wind disturbance as exogenous inputs, and assuming that compensation of its effects can be achieved through quasi-static vehicle motions, this paper proposes an innovative estimation and control scheme comprising a linear dynamic filter for the estimation of such unknown inputs and requiring only position and attitude information. The filter is built upon results from Unknown Input Observer theory and allows estimation of wind and vehicle state without measurement of the wind its…
Holidays? Not for all. Eagles have larger home ranges on holidays as a consequence of human disturbance
2019
Human-wildlife conflicts are the object of raising concern in conservation biology. People living in urban areas are rapidly increasing worldwide and consequently the temporal pattern of occupation of natural areas for recreation is changing as well, resulting in an ever-increasing concentration of people during weekends and holidays. This is particularly evident in affluent societies, where more recreationists visit natural areas on holidays and weekends, causing disturbance to wildlife in the so-called “weekend effect”. Here, we tested the response to disturbance of 30 Bonelli's eagles tracked by high-frequency GPS/GSM telemetry. We analysed daily home-range size, a measure of changing be…
Robust Control of Nonlinear Systems: An Unknown Input Observer Based Approach
2023
Questa tesi propone un controllore robusto per sistemi non lineari tramite l'utilizzo di un osservatore ad ingressi sconosciuti. Attraverso un'opportuna riformulazione dinamica del modello, un generico sistema non lineare viene descritto come la somma di due funzioni, la prima lineare e nota e la seconda altamente non lineare e sconosciuta, derivante dalla conoscenza imperfetta del modello dinamico, dei parametri, o di eventuali disturbi esogeni agenti sul sistema etc., modellabili come perturbazioni (disturbi) della funzione lineare. Questa semplificazione consente una vantaggiosa descrizione dinamica del sistema in forma matriciale. Le informazioni necessarie sono stimate attraverso l'uti…
Report on medium-term effects of the habitat protection and restoration activities of the LIFE Project “Maintenance of the habitats of the Macalube o…
2013
The Site of Community Importance (SCI) “Macalube di Aragona” is prone to severe desertification risk. In fact, its vegetation is disturbed not only by cyclic soil movements resulting from sedimentary volcanism, but it is strongly influenced by the hostile properties of the clayey substratum (prone to intense linear erosion, badly aired, rich in salts, etc.), the long drought period (ca. 4 months) and by the long-lasting history of human pressure. Both stress and disturbance factors influence progressive succession processes, so that the most “mature” local plant communities are () the chenopod shrublands referred to Salsolo-Peganion (habitat 1430 according to 92/43 EU Directive) and the hal…