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Toward intelligent environments: supporting reflection with smart objects in the home
No full textIn our spaces, which are increasingly computational and intelligent, we use objects in our daily activities. Through this article, I seek to build upon existing bodies of knowledge that are well grounded in architecture and HCI. They suggest that we first observe the pattern of people's activities and the objects of use in a space in order to design better and supportive architectural spaces, as well as to design better computing artifacts that can support user activities. In this way, an architectural space becomes smart by supporting natural existing relations within it, such as relations among people, objects, activities, and the space itself. Further, considering these relations when designing smart objects to support reflection about an activity—instead of creating new objects and consequently new usage and interactions—is a valuable way of structuring the analysis of complex spaces. This is well grounded in theories (e.g., distributed cognition) that describe how people think with objects, and that reflection is distributed across people, objects, and spaces. There are three main relations between the architectural space and other components in it: people, activities, and objects. Analyzing those relations becomes even more relevant as we increasingly consider reflection as a goal for design outcomes, especially for the design of smart and interactive artifacts
Banchi Prova per la Caratterizzazione Dinamica di Cuscinetti Pneumostatici
No full textAl giorno d'oggi, viste le sempre più elevate precisioni richieste nei sistemi di supporto, le caratterizzazioni dinamiche rivestono un ruolo fondamentale, dato che le caratterizzazioni statiche non sono sufficienti a descrivere adeguatamente il comportamento di questo tipo di sistemi. Per questo motivo, risulta cruciale allestire banchi prova che siano adatti a questo tipo di prove
The Spatial Distribution of Ankle Muscles Activity Discriminates Aged from Young Subjects during Standing
No full textDuring standing, age-related differences in the activation of ankle muscles have been reported from surface electromyograms (EMGs) sampled locally. Given though activity seems to distribute unevenly within ankle muscles, the local sampling of surface EMGs may provide a biased view on how often and how much elderly and young individuals activate these muscles during standing. This study aimed therefore at sampling EMGs from multiple regions of individual ankle muscles to evaluate whether the distribution of muscle activity differs between aged and young subjects during standing. Thirteen young and eleven aged, healthy subjects were tested. Surface EMGs were sampled at multiple skin locations from tibialis anterior, soleus and medial and lateral gastrocnemius muscles while subjects stood at ease. The root mean square amplitude of EMGs was considered to estimate the duration, the degree of activity and the size of the region where muscle activity was detected. Our main findings revealed the medial gastrocnemius was active for longer periods in aged (interquartile interval; 74.1-98.2%) than young (44.9-81.9%) individuals (P = 0.02). Similarly, while tibialis anterior was rarely active in young (0.7-4.4%), in elderly subjects (2.6-82.5%) it was often recruited (P = 0.01). Moreover, EMGs with relatively higher amplitude were detected over a significantly wider proximo-distal region of medial gastrocnemius in aged (29.4-45.6%) than young (20.1-31.3%) subjects (P = 0.04). These results indicate the duration and the size of active muscle volume, as quantified from the spatial distribution of surface EMGs, may discriminate aged from young individuals during standing; elderlies seem to rely more heavily on the active loading of ankle muscles to control their standing posture than young individuals. Most importantly, current results suggest different conclusions on the active control of standing posture may be drawn depending on the skin location from where EMGs are collected, in particular for the medial gastrocnemius
Ultrafiltration Membranes Functionalized with Polydopamine with Enhanced Contaminant Removal by Adsorption
No full textAging Simulation of the Tailings from Stava Fluorite Extraction by Exposure to Gamma Rays
No full textTailings storage facilities are disposal systems for storing the waste products of the mining industry consisting of a slurry mixture made of soil, rock and water that remain after the mineral values have been removed from the patent ore. Tailings dams are supposed to last forever, so after their deposition, tailings can experience aging processes with physical and chemical changes depending on the interactions between local conditions and source mineralogy. The consequences of these aging processes are increased interlocking of particles and oxidation processes, sometimes making previously safely held contaminants available and mobile. Among the long-term aging processes, the natural ionizing radiation (from radioactive isotopes of the soils, cosmic rays, and also ultraviolet rays from the sun) can be considered, as proposed in the current research. Furthermore, in many countries, tailings are beginning to be re-used as backfill, landscaping material or feedstock for cement and concrete. So if any, the long-term physical and chemical modifications could affect the hydraulic and mechanical behaviour of tailings with relevant economic consequences. For these reasons, wet and dry silty samples of tailings spilled out after the failure of the Stava tailings dam (Trentino Alto Adige, Italy) were exposed to gamma rays, as an accelerated aging technique to simulate the natural ionizing radiation, and then characterized. The modifications on physical and chemical properties were observed and, despite certain chemical stability, some physical changes were observed, particularly in terms of size particle distribution, inner porosity of the particles and specific surface
Insegnamento d'Architettura, pratica, collezionismo e studio del disegno architettonico nelle capitali del Barocco italiano tra 1670 e 1730
No full textFusion of spatial gray level dependency and fractal texture features for the characterization of thyroid lesions
No full textThyroid is a small gland situated at the anterior side of the neck and one of the largest glands of the endocrine system. The abrupt cell growth or malignancy in the thyroid gland may cause thyroid cancer. Ultrasound images distinctly represent benign and malignant lesions, but accuracy may be poor due to subjective interpretation. Computer Aided Diagnosis (CAD) can minimize the errors created due to subjective interpretation and assists to make fast accurate diagnosis. In this work, fusion of Spatial Gray Level Dependence Features (SGLDF) and fractal textures are used to decipher the intrinsic structure of benign and malignant thyroid lesions. These features are subjected to graph based Marginal Fisher Analysis (MFA) to reduce the number of features. The reduced features are subjected to various ranking methods and classifiers. We have achieved an average accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of 97.52%, 90.32% and 98.57% respectively using Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier. The achieved maximum Area Under Curve (AUC) is 0.9445. Finally, Thyroid Clinical Risk Index (TCRI) a single number is developed using two MFA features to discriminate the two classes. This prototype system is ready to be tested with huge diverse database
Stimuli sensitive polyurethane-based hydrogels for the controlled and triggered release of anti-inflammatory drugs and anti-bacterial ions
No full textPUFoam: A novel open-source CFD solver for the simulation of polyurethane foams
No full textIn this work a transient three-dimensional mathematical model is formulated and validated for the simulation of polyurethane (PU) foams. The model is based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and is coupled with a population balance equation (PBE) to describe the evolution of the gas bubbles/cells within the PU foam. The front face of the expanding foam is monitored on the basis of the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method using a compressible solver available in OpenFOAM version 3.0.1. The solver is additionally supplemented to include the PBE, solved with the quadrature method of moments (QMOM), the polymerization kinetics, an adequate rheological model and a simple model for the foam thermal conductivity. The new solver is labelled as PUFoam and is, for the first time in this work, validated for 12 different mixing-cup experiments. Comparison of the time evolution of the predicted and experimentally measured density and temperature of the PU foam shows the potentials and limitations of the approach