3,107 research outputs found
"Il bel Palagio" Giustiniani di Antonio Pizzocaro: appunti per una storia architettonica
No full textIl saggio ripercorre, attraverso i dati d'archivio e sulla scorta della letteratura edita, la storia seicentesca del palazzo Giustiniani di Vicenza, progettato dall'architetto Antonio Pizzocaro su commissione del marchese Raffaele Giustiniani (genovese ma da qualche anno a Vicenza) e terminato nel 1656
Hybrid Imaging Detectors in X-Ray Phase-Contrast Applications
No full textX-Ray Phase-Contrast Imaging (XPCI) techniques are gaining increasing interest not only within the synchrotron radiation community, where most of them were first developed and implemented, but also among X-ray imaging experts who make use of standard laboratory sources. While conventional X-ray imaging typically depicts the attenuation of an investigated sample, XPCI allows access to complementary information such as refraction and ultra-small-angle-scattering (USAXS). These additional contrast sources lead to a major enhancement in the visibility of structures featuring poor attenuation contrast such as in biological soft tissues and plastic-based samples. Additionally, the USAXS signal reveals inhomogeneities on a scale smaller than the system’s spatial resolution, being suited for the investigation of a wide range of microparticulate samples, spanning, e.g., from lung tissues to composite materials. Independently from XPCI, recent years have witnessed unprecedented development in the field of hybrid X-ray imaging detectors. Novel devices have both led to major advantages over conventional indirect conversion detectors, such as higher efficiency and/or higher spatial resolution, and opened up entirely new possibilities, such as pixel-based energy discrimination of photons, spectral performances, and super-resolution imaging. In this framework, the aim of the chapter is to provide a link between XPCI and novel detector technologies, focusing on the specific role of detectors in the phase signal formation process for the most common XPCI techniques. Adding to the theoretical background, several successful examples of state-of-the-art detectors’ integration with XPCI are provided, as well as a number of foreseeable applications strongly leveraging on novel detectors’ performances
An assessment of the impact of possible CAP reform scenarios on Romanian agriculture
No full textUsing a simplified model, with key-variable the prices of two different possible scenarios of CAP reform after 2013 (moderate and radical), this paper present a comparison between the price effects of implementation of each reform scenario at 2015 horizon on Romanian agriculture. This short analysis shows that, under the presented hypotheses, the net welfare effect, due to the price changes, for the selected products, is positive in both reform scenarios, yet greater in the case of the radical reform. Integrated in the large context of Romanian development, it seems that the influence of CAP reform upon agriculture and rural areas will be most likely a gradual one: an interpenetration between the two scenarios is foreseeable, starting with the moderate reform that will dominate the period around 2013, the reform measures acquiring a more radical character afterwards.CAP reform, Romania, welfare effects, Agricultural and Food Policy,
Rich, Sturmian, and trapezoidal words
No full textIn this paper we explore various interconnections between rich words, Sturmian words, and trapezoidal words. Rich words, first introduced by the second and third authors together with J. Justin and S. Widmer, constitute a new class of finite and infinite words characterized by having the maximal number of palindromic factors. Every finite Sturmian word is rich, but not conversely. Trapezoidal words were first introduced by the first author in studying the behavior of the subword complexity of finite Sturmian words. Unfortunately this property does not characterize finite Sturmian words. In this note we show that the only trapezoidal palindromes are Sturmian. More generally we show that Sturmian palindromes can be characterized either in terms of their subword complexity (the trapezoidal property) or in terms of their palindromic complexity. We also obtain a similar characterization of rich palindromes in terms of a relation between palindromic complexity and subword complexity
Manufacturing and Properties of High-Velocity Oxygen Fuel (HVOF)-Sprayed FeVCrC Coatings
No full textThis paper studies the microstructure, sliding wear behavior and corrosion resistance of high-velocity oxygen fuel (HVOF)-sprayed FeVCrC-based coatings. Various process parameters were tested to evaluate their effects on the coating properties, which were also compared to those of HVOF-sprayed NiCrBSi and Stellite-6 coatings. The Fe alloy coatings are composed of flattened splats, originating from molten droplets and consisting of a super-saturated solid solution, together with rounded particles, coming from partially unmolten material and containing V- and Fe-based carbide precipitates. All process parameters, apart from “extreme” settings with excess comburent in the flame, produce dense coatings, indicating that the feedstock powder is quite easily processable by HVOF. These coatings, with a microhardness of 650-750 HV0.3, exhibit wear rates of ≈2 × 10−6 mm3/(Nm) in ball-on-disk tests against sintered Al2O3 spheres. They perform far better than the reference coatings, and better than other Fe- and Ni-based alloy coatings tested in previous research. On the other hand, the corrosion resistance of the coating material (tested by electrochemical polarization in 0.1 M HCl solution) is quite low. Even in the absence of interconnected porosity, this results in extensive, selective damage to the Fe-based matrix. This coating material is therefore unadvisable for severely corrosive environments
Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) as pre-treatment for sol-gel coating on aluminum and magnesium alloys
No full textCharacterization Results for the Poset Based Representation of Topological Relations - I: Introduction and Models
No full text@article{DBLP:journals/informaticaSI/ForlizziN99,
author = {Luca Forlizzi and
Enrico Nardelli},
title = {Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation
of Topological Relations - I: Introduction and Models.},
journal = {Informatica (Slovenia)},
volume = {23},
number = {2},
year = {1999},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation of Topological Relations - II: Intersection and Union
No full text@article{DBLP:journals/informaticaSI/ForlizziN00,
author = {Luca Forlizzi and
Enrico Nardelli},
title = {Characterization Results for the Poset Based Representation
of Topological Relations - II: Intersection and Union.},
journal = {Informatica (Slovenia)},
volume = {24},
number = {1},
year = {2000},
bibsource = {DBLP, http://dblp.uni-trier.de}
System-on-chip Computing and Interconnection Architectures for Telecommunications and Signal Processing
No full textThis dissertation proposes novel architectures and design techniques targeting SoC building blocks for telecommunications and signal processing applications.
Hardware implementation of Low-Density Parity-Check decoders is approached at both the algorithmic and the architecture level. Low-Density Parity-Check codes are a promising coding scheme for future communication standards due to their outstanding error correction performance.
This work proposes a methodology for analyzing effects of finite precision arithmetic on error correction performance and hardware complexity. The methodology is throughout employed for co-designing the decoder. First, a low-complexity check node based on the P-output decoding principle is designed and characterized on a CMOS standard-cells library. Results demonstrate implementation loss below 0.2 dB down to BER of 10^{-8} and a saving in complexity up to 59% with respect to other works in recent literature. High-throughput and low-latency issues are addressed with modified single-phase decoding schedules. A new "memory-aware" schedule is proposed requiring down to 20% of memory with respect to the traditional two-phase flooding decoding. Additionally, throughput is doubled and logic complexity reduced of 12%. These advantages are traded-off with error correction performance, thus making the solution attractive only for long codes, as those adopted in the DVB-S2 standard. The "layered decoding" principle is extended to those codes not specifically conceived for this technique. Proposed architectures exhibit complexity savings in the order of 40% for both area and power consumption figures, while implementation loss is smaller than 0.05 dB.
Most modern communication standards employ Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing as part of their physical layer. The core of OFDM is the Fast Fourier Transform and its inverse in charge of symbols (de)modulation. Requirements on throughput and energy efficiency call for FFT hardware implementation, while ubiquity of FFT suggests the design of parametric, re-configurable and re-usable IP hardware macrocells. In this context, this thesis describes an FFT/IFFT core compiler particularly suited for implementation of OFDM communication systems. The tool employs an accuracy-driven configuration engine which automatically profiles the internal arithmetic and generates a core with minimum operands bit-width and thus minimum circuit complexity. The engine performs a closed-loop optimization over three different internal arithmetic models (fixed-point, block floating-point and convergent block floating-point) using the numerical accuracy budget given by the user as a reference point. The flexibility and re-usability of the proposed macrocell are illustrated through several case studies which encompass all current state-of-the-art OFDM communications standards (WLAN, WMAN, xDSL, DVB-T/H, DAB and UWB). Implementations results are presented for two deep sub-micron standard-cells libraries (65 and 90 nm) and commercially available FPGA devices. Compared with other FFT core compilers, the proposed environment produces macrocells with lower circuit complexity and same system level performance (throughput, transform size and numerical accuracy).
The final part of this dissertation focuses on the Network-on-Chip design paradigm whose goal is building scalable communication infrastructures connecting hundreds of core. A low-complexity link architecture for mesochronous on-chip communication is discussed. The link enables skew constraint looseness in the clock tree synthesis, frequency speed-up, power consumption reduction and faster back-end turnarounds. The proposed architecture reaches a maximum clock frequency of 1 GHz on 65 nm low-leakage CMOS standard-cells library. In a complex test case with a full-blown NoC infrastructure, the link overhead is only 3% of chip area and 0.5% of leakage power consumption.
Finally, a new methodology, named metacoding, is proposed. Metacoding generates correct-by-construction technology independent RTL codebases for NoC building blocks. The RTL coding phase is abstracted and modeled with an Object Oriented framework, integrated within a commercial tool for IP packaging (Synopsys CoreTools suite). Compared with traditional coding styles based on pre-processor directives, metacoding produces 65% smaller codebases and reduces the configurations to verify up to three orders of magnitude
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