1,720,970 research outputs found
Postural Comfort Inside a Car: Development of an Innovative Model to Evaluate the Discomfort Level
No full textHow can car designers evaluate device’s position inside
a car today? Today only subjective tests or “reachability”
tests are made to assess if a generic user is able
to reach devices, but it’s no longer enough.
The aim of this study is to identify an instrument (index)
that is able to provide a numerical information about the
discomfort level connected with a posture that is kept
inside a car to reach a device, by this instrument it
should be possible not only judge a posture, but also
compare different solutions and get rapid and accurate
evaluations.
In the state of the art there are many indexes developed
to evaluate postural comfort (like RULA, REBA and
LUBA [3, 4, 5]) but none of them has been realized to
evaluate postures’ conditions that can be detected inside
a car, so their evaluations cannot be acceptable. There
are also many other studies (like Porter and Gyi, Krist,
Grandjean, Rebiffe, Dreyfuss 2D and 3D) which deal
with postural comfort inside car, but they have only
assess neutral angles and ranges of comfort, so their
evaluations are qualitative and discontinuous.
For these reasons it has been realized a new instrument
(implemented by our research group using MatlabTM) to
give the wanted numerical evaluation; it is based on an
human scale manikin that can reproduce each user and
each posture which can be introduced directly or
imported from a digital human modeling (DHM) software
(like JACKTM developed by U.G.S.), on discomfort
functions (one for each degree of freedom of the
manikin) and on a method (based on the distribution of
the weights of the human body on the different joints) to
aggregate them and return total discomfort values
Synthesis of dialkyl ethers by decarboxylation of dialkyl carbonates
Full text linkThe decarboxylation reaction of dialkyl carbonates to give their related ethers was investigated.
The reaction was carried out at atmospheric pressure and in the presence of hydrotalcite or basic alumina as catalysts without any solvent. The influence of several reaction parameters on the
selectivity was studied (e.g. temperature, amount of catalyst, substrate concentration, solvent).
The stability of the catalyst was also investigated. The experimental data for the decarboxylation confirmed that this reaction is complicated by competitive processes, such as dismutation and, in one case, pyrolysis. The results obtained show that in the presence of hydrotalcite as a catalyst,
symmetrical dialkyl ethers can be synthesised with yields up to 80%. Dissymmetrical ethers (i.e. methyl alkyl ethers) can be produced with yields up to 80% at high temperature (250 ◦C). The
catalyst proved to be fully recyclable in all cases studied, except for the carbonate containing n-octyl moiety
Process for the preparation of alkyl- and/or alkenylpolyglycol ethers with alkyl end-capping groups
No full textCALIBRATION AND VALIDATION OF A MACROSCOPIC TRAFFIC FLOW MODEL BASED ON PLATOON DISPERSION AND QUEUE PROPAGATION
No full textThis paper proposes a preliminary calibration and validation of a macroscopic traffic flow model for signalised junctions. In fact, on the network signal setting design problem, a reliable modelling approach must be adopted to acknowledge the traffic flow effects, considering two phenomena: queue dispersion and spillback. The proposed model is an extension of the space-time discrete Cell Transmission Model (CTM), which can simulate dispersion and horizontal queue. This preliminary calibration and validation use real-world data collected on an arterial of the city of Salerno (south of Italy). Results showed that the estimated parameters are consistent with the literature
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
Sustainable traffic management in an urban area: An integrated framework for real-time traffic control and route guidance design
No full textThis paper focuses on the presentation of an integrated framework based on two advanced strategies, aimed at mitigating the effect of traffic congestion in terms of performance and environmental impact. In particular, the paper investigates the "operational benefits" that can be derived from the combination of traffic control (TC) and route guidance (RG) strategies. The framework is based on two modules and integrates a within-day traffic control method and a day-to-day behavioral route choice model. The former module consists of an enhanced traffic control model that can be applied to design traffic signal decision variables, suitable for real-time optimization. The latter designs the information consistently with predictive user reactions to the information itself. The proposed framework is implemented to a highly congested sub-network in the city center of Naples (Italy) and different scenarios are tested and compared. The "do nothing" scenario (current; DN) and the "modeled compliance" (MC) scenario, in which travelers' reaction to the information (i.e., compliance) is explicitly represented. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy and the modeling framework, the following analyses are carried out: (i) Network performance analysis; (ii) system convergence and stability analysis, as well as the compliance evolution over time; (iii) and emissions and fuel consumption impact analysis
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
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