Search results for "electrical"
showing 10 items of 11048 documents
Steam sterilization processes affect the stability of clinical thermometers: Thermistor and prototypal FBG probe comparison
2020
Abstract Temperature is one of the most frequently measured physical quantities in clinical environment and a good biomarker of illness. The need for reusable probes, which have to be sterilized to prevent infections, requires the metrological qualification of thermometer probes in response to ageing effects induced by several sterilization processes. In this study, we investigated the effect of repeated sterilizations on both a commonly-used autoclavable thermistor probe and a prototypal Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBG) probe for temperature measurements. Findings highlighted a greater reliability of the proposed FBG probe than the commercial thermistor. Specifically, the FBG probe was able to w…
Nano-magnetic potassium impregnated ceria as catalyst for the biodiesel production
2019
Abstract The main objective of this work comprises the investigation of biodiesel production from rapeseed oil using potassium impregnated Fe3O4-CeO2 nanocatalyst. The various concentration of potassium impregnated Fe3O4-CeO2 was screened for catalytic conversion of rapeseed oil to triglyceride methyl ester. The 25 wt % potassium impregnated Fe3O4-CeO2 nanocatalyst showed best biodiesel production. Nanocatalyst was characterized by FTIR, XRD, SEM, TEM, BET and Hammett indicator for basicity test. The characterization of biodiesel was performed with GC-MS, 1H and 13C NMR. Moreover, the optimum reaction parameters such as catalyst amount (wt %), oil to methanol ratio, reaction time and reacti…
Wooden panel paintings investigation: An air-coupled ultrasonic imaging approach
2007
In this paper, a method for the study of wooden panel paintings using air-coupled acoustical imaging is presented. In order to evaluate the advantages of the technique, several samples were made to mimic panel paintings along with their typical defects. These specimens were tested by means of both single-sided and through-transmission techniques using planar transducers. Image data were processed by means of a two-dimensional (2-D)-fast Fourier transform-based algorithm to increase the S/N ratio and 2-D representations (C-scans) were generated. The simulated defects were imaged using both configurations. Investigations were undertaken on four antique paintings from a private collection. The…
Semantic structures of timbre emerging from social and acoustic descriptions of music
2011
The perceptual attributes of timbre have inspired a considerable amount of multidisciplinary research, but because of the complexity of the phenomena, the approach has traditionally been confined to laboratory conditions, much to the detriment of its ecological validity. In this study, we present a purely bottom-up approach for mapping the concepts that emerge from sound qualities. A social media ( http://www.last.fm ) is used to obtain a wide sample of verbal descriptions of music (in the form of tags) that go beyond the commonly studied concept of genre, and from this the underlying semantic structure of this sample is extracted. The structure that is thereby obtained is then evaluated th…
Combining gestures and vocalizations to imitate sounds
2015
International audience; Communicating about sounds is a difficult task without a technical language, and naïve speakers often rely on different kinds of non-linguistic vocalizations and body gestures (Lemaitre et al. 2014). Previous work has independently studied how effectively people describe sounds with gestures or vocalizations (Caramiaux, 2014, Lemaitre and Rocchesso, 2014). However, speech communication studies suggest a more intimate link between the two processes (Kendon, 2004). Our study thus focused on the combination of manual gestures and non-speech vocalizations in the communication of sounds. We first collected a large database of vocal and gestural imitations of a variety of …
Archetypal analysis: an alternative to clustering for unsupervised texture segmentation
2019
Texture segmentation is one of the main tasks in image applications, specifically in remote sensing, where the objective is to segment high-resolution images of natural landscapes into different cover types. Often the focus is on the selection of discriminant textural features, and although these are really fundamental, there is another part of the process that is also influential, partitioning different homogeneous textures into groups. A methodology based on archetype analysis (AA) of the local textural measurements is proposed. AA seeks the purest textures in the image and it can find the borders between pure textures, as those regions composed of mixtures of several archetypes. The prop…
Technical Note: Prediction Models of Airborne Sound Insulation of Multilayer Materials with Viscoelastic Thin Sheets
2008
The growing introduction of new insulation materials in building acoustics has caused an increase of the importance of the prediction tools. Appropriate simulations allow strictly necessary laboratory measurements to be identified. In this way, costs are reduced. The demands of new legislation has resulted in the appearance of various software designed to facilitate prediction. The prediction models are based on different hypotheses: adaptation of impedances, spatial behaviour of spectral components, statistical energy distribution, the Finite Element Method (FEM), etc. Each of these models and methods offer advantages and contain limitations. In this paper, different models for prediction…
Mini-COVIDNet: Efficient Lightweight Deep Neural Network for Ultrasound Based Point-of-Care Detection of COVID-19
2021
Lung ultrasound (US) imaging has the potential to be an effective point-of-care test for detection of COVID-19, due to its ease of operation with minimal personal protection equipment along with easy disinfection. The current state-of-the-art deep learning models for detection of COVID-19 are heavy models that may not be easy to deploy in commonly utilized mobile platforms in point-of-care testing. In this work, we develop a lightweight mobile friendly efficient deep learning model for detection of COVID-19 using lung US images. Three different classes including COVID-19, pneumonia, and healthy were included in this task. The developed network, named as Mini-COVIDNet, was bench-marked with …
Thermoelectric properties of CoTiSb based compounds
2009
Several CoTiSb based compounds were synthesized and investigated on their thermoelectric properties. The aim was to improve the thermoelectric properties of CoTiSb by the systematic substitution of atoms or the introduction of additional Co into the vacant sublattice. The solid solutions Co1+xTiSb, Co1?yCuyTiSb and CoTiSb1?zBiz were synthesized. X-ray diffraction was used to investigate the crystal structure. The resistivity, the Seebeck coefficient and the thermal conductivity were determined for all compounds in the temperature range from 2 to 400?K. The highest figure of merit for each solid solution is presented. We were able to improve the figure of merit by a factor of approximately s…
Aequorin-expressing yeast emits light under electric control
2011
In this study, we show the use of direct external electrical stimulation of a jellyfish luminescent calcium-activated protein, aequorin, expressed in a transgenic yeast strain. Yeast cultures were electrically stimulated through two electrodes coupled to a standard power generator. Even low (1.5. V) electric pulses triggered a rapid light peak and serial light pulses were obtained after electric pulses were applied periodically, suggesting that the system is re-enacted after a short refraction time. These results open up a new scenario, in the very interphase between synthetic biology and cybernetics, in which complex cellular behavior might be subjected to electrical control.