1,720,961 research outputs found
Development of an innovative method for real-time monitoring and control of comfort in indoor environments based on dynamic measurements of personal parameters
No full textIl benessere degli occupanti è uno degli aspetti fondamentali da considerare nella progettazione e gestione degli edifici. Le condizioni del microclima hanno un impatto significativo sia sulla salute che sulla produttività.
Considerando il modello di Fanger, il comfort termico è un aspetto complesso poiché dipende sia da parametri ambientali che personali (tasso metabolico (M) e isolamento termico del vestiario (Icl)). I primi sono facilmente misurabili con reti di sensori, mentre fornire una stima corretta delle variabili fisiologiche è molto complesso data la necessità di acquisire parametri sulla persona. Nel presente lavoro di tesi sono state sviluppate nuove metodologie per la misura real-time dei parametri personali per migliorare la valutazione del comfort termico.
Per quanto riguarda M, è stata sviluppata una metodologia che si basa su misurazioni continue della frequenza cardiaca e di altri parametri fisiologici adottando un dispositivo indossabile per acquisire i dati. I test effettuati in laboratorio hanno permesso di ricavare una relazione che fornisce una misura dinamica del tasso metabolico. La valutazione dinamica dell’isolamento termico dovuto al vestiario è effettuata su base giornaliera ed è ricavata in funzione delle condizioni climatiche esterne. Inoltre, è stato sviluppato un banco di prova virtuale per testare l'impatto del sistema sulla gestione degli edifici. È stato utilizzato un modello di simulazione di un edificio per testare un controllo della temperatura dell'aria basato su PMV. Infine, è stata effettuata l'analisi d'incertezza allo scopo di studiare l'impatto dei metodi sviluppati. I risultati mostrano un miglioramento nella gestione del comfort. Le metodologie sviluppate sono state adottate in un caso studio reale in cui la valutazione del comfort termico è stata eseguita utilizzando un sistema innovativo (Comfort Eye). Esso permette il monitoraggio in tempo reale del comfort termico. Inoltre, il sistema di monitoraggio del comfort è stato integrato con un sistema di building management.The well-being of buildings’ occupants is one of the main aspects to be considered in buildings design and management. The indoor environment significantly impacts both health and productivity. The present work aims to provide a deep investigation of comfort aspects, focusing on thermal comfort.
Thermal comfort is a complex aspect since it depends on both environmental and physiological quantities. Considering the Fangers’ model, the environmental parameters can be easily monitored with sensors networks, whereas to provide a good evaluation of the physiological variables is more difficult. The personal parameters greatly affect the evaluation of the indoor thermal comfort. Therefore, this work presents new methodologies for both the real-time and dynamic estimation of those parameters to improve thermal comfort assessment.
Regarding the metabolic rate parameter, the methodology is based on the heart rate measurements coupled with other physiological parameters. Thus, a wearable multi-parametric device was adopted to collect data and tests were conducted to find the best relationship for the estimation of metabolic rate. Conversely, the dynamic evaluation of clothing insulation was derived from the external climate conditions. A virtual test bench was developed to test the impact of the system on building management. A simulation model of a building was used to test a PMV-based air temperature controller. The uncertainty analysis was conducted to study the impact of the proposed methods. The results showed an improvement of comfort management. The methodologies were adopted in a real case study in which the evaluation of indoor thermal comfort was performed by using an innovative system (the Comfort Eye). It allows the real-time monitoring of indoor thermal comfort based on the Fangers’ model. To reach this scope a new version of the Comfort Eye system was developed and it was integrated with a building management system
Smart monitoring of user's health at home: Performance evaluation and signal processing of a wearable sensor for the measurement of Heart Rate and Breathing Rate
No full text
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A novel approach for features extraction in physiological signals
No full textThe authors have investigated a novel processing technique, which allows to measure possibly relevant features in the ECG (Electrocardiogram) signal according to the
morphology of its waveform. The aim of this work is to prove its efficacy in the assessment of the subject’s Heart Rate (HR) and to broaden its use to signals coming from different biomedical sensors (based on optical, acoustical and mechanical principles) for the computation of HR. The analysis technique proposed for the identification of the main feature (R-peak) in ECG signal provides results that are comparable to those obtained with traditional approaches. The approach has also been applied to other signals related to blood flow, such as PCG (Phonocardiography), PPG (Photoplethysmography) and VCG (Vibrocardiography), where standard algorithms (i.e. Pan & Tompkins) could not be widely applied. HR results from a measurement campaign on 8 healthy subjects have shown, respect to ECG, a deviation (calculated as 2 ) of ±3.3 bpm, ±2.3 bpm and ±1.5 bpm for PCG, PPG and VCG. Future work will involve the extraction of additional features from the previous signals, with the aim of a deeper characterization of them to better describe the subject’s health status
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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