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HBIM and Virtual Tools: A New Chance to Preserve Architectural Heritage
Get PDFNowadays, architectural heritage is increasingly exposed to dangers due to natural disasters or human invasive actions. However, management and conservation represent crucial phases within the life cycle of historical buildings. Unfortunately, the complexity of conservation practices and the lack of knowledge of historic buildings are the cause of an inefficient recovering process in case of emergencies. To overcome this problem, this research aims to ensure the preservation of relevant information through the use of building information modeling (BIM) methodology. By developing historic building information models (HBIMs), it is possible to enhance the architectural heritage. This represents an opportunity to incorporate digital media into the global heritage conservation field. To achieve this goal, a historical castle was selected as a case study; this unique piece of architecture is located in the Piedmont Region, close to city of Turin (Italy). The results show a direct relation between a historical digital model, finalized to the management of architectural and system components, and visualization tools. To conclude, the adoption of this strategy is an effective way to preserve and consult information using advanced visualization techniques based on augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR)
Regulatory and ownership determinants of unbundling regime choice for European electricity transmission utilities
No full textOne of the fundamental provisions of the European electricity directives is the so-called unbundling of structures and functions. Vertical disintegration with ownership unbundling is considered an important step toward electricity market restructuring. While full unbundling models appear to be the most prevalent, several European countries adhered solely to less stringent forms of unbundling. Using a dataset of the 35 major electricity transmission utilities in Europe, this study provides an econometric analysis to understand the individual effect of regulation and ownership structure on the decision to adopt more stringent unbundling regimes. The overall results show that incentive-based or hybrid regulatory schemes and private ownership, are associated with a higher probability that a country will opt for full unbundlin
A survey of landmine detection using hyperspectral imaging
No full textHyperspectral imaging is a trending technique in remote sensing that finds its application in many different areas, such as agriculture, mapping, target detection, food quality monitoring, etc. This technique gives the ability to remotely identify the composition of each pixel of the image. Therefore, it is a natural candidate for the purpose of landmine detection, thanks to its inherent safety and fast response time. In this paper, we will present the results of several studies that employed hyperspectral imaging for the purpose of landmine detection, discussing the different signal processing techniques used in this framework for hyperspectral image processing and target detection. Our purpose is to highlight the progresses attained in the detection of landmines using hyperspectral imaging and to identify possible perspectives for future work, in order to achieve a better detection in real-time operation mode
Unavailability percentage as energy planning and economic choice parameter
No full textThe unavailability percentage is suggested as an indicator of the level of the technological development in relation to the optimized use of energy. This quantity can be used in economic, and socio-political evaluations because it is related to the exergy lost during a process, and therefore it can provide information on the optimization level obtained through a technology or it can be useful to compare different technologies
Rainfall thresholds for the activation of shallow landslides in the Italian Alps: the role of environmental conditioning factors
No full textThe aim of the present work is to investigate the role exerted by selected environmental factors in the activation of rainfall-triggered shallow landslides and to identify site-specific rainfall thresholds. The study concerns the Italian Alps. The region is exposed to widespread slope instability phenomena due to its geological, morphological and climatic features. Furthermore, the high level of anthropization that characterizes wide portions of the territory increases the associated risk. Hence, the analysis of potential predisposing factors influencing landslides triggering is worthwhile to improve the current prediction skills and to enhance the preparedness and the response to these natural hazards. During the last years, the Italian National Research Council's Research Institute for Hydro-geological Protection (CNR-IRPI) has contributed to the analysis of triggering conditions for rainfall-induced landslides in the framework of a national project. The project, funded by the National Department for Civil Protection (DPC), focuses on the identification of the empirical rainfall thresholds for the activation of shallow landslides in Italy. The first outcomes of the project reveal a certain variability of the pluviometric conditions responsible for the mass movements activation, when different environmental settings are compared. This variability is probably related to the action of local environmental factors, such as lithology, climatic regime or soil characteristics. Based on this hypothesis, the present study aims to identify separated domains within the Italian Alps, where different triggering conditions exist and different countermeasures are needed for risk prevention. For this purpose, we collected information concerning 511 landslides activated in the period 2000-2012 and reconstructed 453 rainfall events supposed to be responsible for the activations. Then, we selected a set of thematic maps to represent the hypothesised landslide conditioning factors and to identify the supposed homogeneous domains within the study area. We employed an existing statistical method for the definition of the cumulated event rainfall vs. rainfall duration (ED) thresholds, for both the entire catalogue of rainfall events and for the events falling in the separated domains. The obtained results contribute to a better understanding of the role exerted by geological, pedological and climatic factors in landslides activation and help identifying separated domains where different risk managing strategies should be adopted. The proposed methodology can be a valid support for risk reduction strategies planning at regional scale
Growing Curvilinear Component Analysis (GCCA) for Dimensionality Reduction of Nonstationary Data
No full textDealing with time-varying high dimensional data is a big problem for real time pattern recognition. Only linear projections, like principal component analysis, are used in real time while nonlinear techniques need the whole database (offline). Their incremental variants do no work properly. The onCCA neural network ad-dresses this problem; it is incremental and performs simultaneously the data quantization and projection by using the Curvilinear Component Analysis (CCA), a distance-preserving reduction technique. However, onCCA requires an initial architecture, provided by a small offline CCA. This paper presents a variant of onCCA, called growing CCA (GCCA), which has a self-organized incremen-tal architecture adapting to the nonstationary data distribution. This is achieved by introducing the ideas of "seeds", pairs of neurons which colonize the input do-main, and "bridge", a different kind of edge in the manifold graph, which signal the data nonstationarity. Some examples from artificial problems and a real appli-cation are given
A green organic-solvent-free route to prepare nanostructured zinc oxide carriers of clotrimazole for pharmaceutical applications
No full textIn the context of proposing cleaner production strategies for the pharmaceutical industry, an organicsolvent-free route to prepare nanostructured zinc oxide (NsZnO) reservoirs of clotrimazole (CTZ) was studied. Two different NsZnO materials were synthesized, selecting wet chemical approaches without any organic solvents: chemical bath deposition and a soft-template sol-gel method. Both materials showed a pure crystalline wurzite structure with two different morphologies: aggregates of nanosheets or interconnected nanoparticles. For the former material the specific surface area and the pore volume reached the values of 66 m2/g and 0,230 cm3/g, respectively, which were higher than those of the latter (19 m2/g and 0,050 cm3/g). For the first time, the loading of CTZ in a ZnO carrier was performed using supercritical CO2 as a solvent. The NsZnO materials were characterized, before and after the drug loading, by FESEM, EDS, XRD, nitrogen adsorption isotherms, TGA, DSC. CTZ was dispersed in the NsZnO carrier in amorphous form, with a maximum loading of 17% w/w. The decrease of specific surface area and pore volume upon drug loading for both samples is ascribed to the adsorption of CTZ molecules on the surface of the NsZnO materials. This confirms the feasibility of using the NsZnO as a CTZ carrier. In vitro drug-release was investigated and revealed that the NsZnO carrier can deliver CTZ with a faster release of a larger drug amount when compared to the solid crystalline drug. The novel clean preparation route of a ZnO carrier for CTZ delivery herein presented is easily adabtable to batch small-scale pharmaceutical industrial process
Assessing Side-Differences in the Organization of Biceps Brachii Motor Units in Healthy Subjects and Stroke Patients. An Evaluation from Surface EMG and Incremental Electrical Stimulation
No full textStudies have suggested a degeneration of lower motoneurons in muscles affected after stroke, with a possible collateral reinnervation from the surviving motoneurons to the denervated muscle fibers. If this assumption holds, each surviving motoneuron would innervate a greater amount of muscle fibers following stroke, i.e., motor units' size would increase in muscles affected after stroke. By combining neuromuscular electrical stimulation with surface electromyography, the present PhD thesis aimed at investigating whether muscle reinnervation following stroke leads to greater variations in the amplitude of M waves elicited in muscles of the affected side of stroke patients, with respect to the contralateral, unaffected side. This issue was verified by applying current pulses at progressively greater intensities in the motoneurons that supply the biceps brachii muscle. Then, the size of increases in the amplitude of M waves elicited consecutively, hereafter defined as increments, was considered to evaluate structural adaptations in biceps brachii motor units following stroke. Changes in the amplitude of M waves evoked in a muscle is usually assumed to reflect changes in the number of motoneurons and, consequently, of muscle fibers activated. Hence, we hypothesized that for similar, relative increases in current intensity, greater increments in the M-waves amplitude would be observed in muscles of the affected than unaffected side of stroke patients. Before verifying this hypothesis, however, we investigated whether the size of increments in biceps brachii M waves differ between arms of healthy subjects. This question was motivated by the fact that, usually, humans tend to control more finely the muscle force production in dominant than non-dominant upper limbs. Once it is well established the recruitment of motor units is a key mechanism for which muscle force is controlled, we hypothesized that a relatively smaller number of motor units maybe recruited in muscles of dominant than nondominant limbs, for any given increase in synaptic input. Hence, we expected to observe smaller increments in the amplitude of M waves evoked in biceps brachii of dominant than non-dominant arms. This PhD thesis was, therefore, based on two main researches, entitled: (1) "Does the biceps brachii muscle respond similarly in both limbs during staircase, electrically elicited contractions?" and (2) "Assessing structural adaptation of biceps brachii motor units after stroke". Both studies were investigated with the same methodological approach mentioned above. Our main findings showed that: (1) increments were significantly smaller in biceps brachii of dominant than non-dominant arms. These results suggest there was a more gradual motor units' recruitment and, therefore, a broader spectrum of motor units' recruitment thresholds in muscles of dominant than non-dominant arms, which may contribute for a finer regulation of force production; (2) there was a clear trend towards greater increments in the amplitude of M waves elicited in biceps brachii of the affected than unaffected arms of most of the stroke patients evaluated. Although for few of these patients it was not clear whether side-differences in the increments magnitude were an outcome of dominance or stroke, the results found corroborate with the notion that collateral reinnervation takes place after stroke, increasing the number of muscle fibers per unit and, therefore, the magnitude of the muscle responses. Overall, the findings of this PhD thesis strengthen the idea that the organization of the neuromuscular system may contribute to accounting for upper limb dominance and that stroke may lead to structural adaptations in motor units of affected muscles
From tradition to practice: bringing up-to-date the holistic approach of the masters of the past through digital tools
No full textThe aim of this paper is to compare the increased value of the new digital tools in supporting multidisciplinary knowledge; this similarly regards the design process conceived by the "masters" of the past, trying to describe what recent graphic representation is and how it was ostensibly handled in the past: particular attention will be devoted to the relationship between classic 2D drawings with respect to 3D modeling tools, enriched by heterogeneous data of a fully integrated approach. Moreover, a broader look at the construction process and the actors involved will focus on the separation between the design conception phase and the design development stage, given the role of Information Technology in documenting our cultural heritage as well as managing integrated building processes