Lateral cephalometric analysis of asymptomatic volunteers and symptomatic patients with and without bilateral temporomandibular joint disk displacement

Few studies of dentofacial and orthodontic structural relationships relative to temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction have been reported. We undertook this investigation to determine any correlation of orthodontic and dentofacial characteristics with TMJ bilateral disc displacement. The population of patients was selected from a TMJ clinic where a control group of asymptomatic volunteers had been previously established and standardized. Differences in skeletal structural features were determined among three study groups: (1) asymptomatic volunteers with no TMJ disk displacement, (2) symptomatic patients with no TMJ disc displacement, and (3) symptomatic patients with bilateral TMJ disk displacement. Thirty-two asymptomatic volunteers without disk displacement (25 female, 7 male) were compared with the same number each of symptomatic patients without TMJ disk displacement and symptomatic patients with bilateral TMJ disk displacement. All subjects had undergone a standardized clinical examination, bilateral TMJ magnetic resonance imaging, and lateral cephalometric radiographic analysis. The groups were matched according to sex, TMJ status, age, and Angle classification of malocclusion. Seventeen lateral cephalometric radiographic cranial base, maxillomandibular, and vertical dimension variables were evaluated and compared among the study groups. The mean angle of SNB, or the intersection of the sella-nasion plane and the nasion–point B line (indicating mandibular retrognathism relative to cranial base), of the symptomatic patients-with-displacement group was significantly smaller than that in the asymptomatic volunteers and symptomatic patients without bilateral disk displacement (p \u3c 0.05). Female subjects showed smaller linear measurements of mandibular length, lower facial height, and total anterior facial height than male subjects in all three groups (p \u3c 0.05). The mean angle of ANB, or the intersection of the nasion–point A and nasion–point B planes (indicating retrognathism of mandible relative to maxilla), was significantly greater in female than in male subjects, in all groups (p \u3c 0.05). Symptomatic patients with bilateral disk displacement had a retropositioned mandible, indicated by a smaller mean SNB angle compared with that in asymptomatic volunteers and symptomatic patients with no disk displacement on either side. Lateral cephalometric radiographic assessment may improve predictability of TMJ disk displacement in orthodontic patients but is not diagnostic; nor does the assessment explain any cause-and-effect relationship. (Am J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop 1998;114:248-55.

Thermo-oxidative characterisation of the residues from persimmon harvest for its use in energy recovery processes

[EN] The residues from the harvest of persimmon fruit will be thermally valorised by means of high temperature reactions within a spouted bed reactor. With the aim to obtain valuable information for the design of the device, the thermo-chemical processes were simulated by multi-rate linear non-isothermal Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA) using O-2 as carrier gas. In addition, a set of analyses were carried out using Ar as carrier gas in order to evaluate the influence of the atmosphere (oxidative or inert conditions) on the decomposition of the samples evaluating the reactions of pyrolysis. The release of gases was monitored by Evolved Gas Analysis (EGA) with in-line Fourier Transformed Infrared (FT-IR) analysis. The thermochemical reaction was mathematically described through the definition of the main kinetic parameters: activation energy (Ea), pre-exponential factor (In A) and model and order of reaction (n). The so-called kinetic triplet was calculated through the application of a methodology based on complementary isoconversional methods. These results will be the initial parameters that will help design the Spouted Bed Reactor and it is envisaged that they will be used in computer simulation software to achieve a better understanding of the process to obtain the optimum operational parameters. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.Moliner, C.; Aguilar, A.; Bosio, B.; Arato, E.; Ribes-Greus, A. (2016). Thermo-oxidative characterisation of the residues from persimmon harvest for its use in energy recovery processes. Fuel Processing Technology. 152:421-429. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuproc.2016.07.008S42142915

Test and Modelling of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Durability: A Focus on Interconnect Role on Global Degradation

High-temperature fuel cells are a promising technology due to their high energy efficiency and low environmental impacts compared to conventional engines. Nevertheless, they have a limited lifetime which reduces the use to a few application fields. Among them, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells (SOFCs) have had a recent development at the industrial level in two possible configurations: an-ode-and electrolyte-supported design. Considering the impossibility to experimentally distinguish the effects of every degradation mechanism on global cell performance, each layer should be tested singularly through ex situ tests and then assembled into a virgin cell to evaluate its role on the whole system by in situ tests. However, this procedure results as quite complex, and some further micro-structural changes could occur during cell sintering. In order to overcome these constraints, the proposed approach paired ex situ experimental observations on a single element with modelling results on global SOFC. As a case study, CoMnO/Crofer22 APU and CuMnO/AISI 441 interconnect samples were tested, measuring their resistance variation for some hundreds of hours, followed by a detailed post-mortem microstructural analysis. Based on a previously validated local model, SIMFC (SIMulation of Fuel Cells), the durability of commercial anode-and electrolyte-supported cells was simulated, adding specific degradation functions only for the interconnects in order to highlight their influence on SOFC performance

A feasibility assessment of a retrofit Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell coal-fired plant for flue gas CO₂ segregation

This work considers the use of a Molten Carbonate Fuel Cell (MCFC) system as a power generation and CO2 concentrator unit downstream of the coal burner of an existing production plant. In this way, the capability of MCFCs for CO2 segregation, which today is studied primarily in reference to large-scale plants, is applied to an intermediate-size plant highlighting the potential for MCFC use as a low energy method of carbon capture. A technical feasibility analysis was performed using an MCFC system-integrated model capable of determining steady-state performance across varying feed composition. The MCFC user model was implemented in Aspen Custom Modeler and integrated into the reference plant in Aspen Plus. The model considers electrochemical, thermal, and mass balance effects to simulate cell electrical and CO2 segregation performance. Results obtained suggest a specific energy requirement of 1.41 MJ kg CO2 121 significantly lower than seen in conventional Monoethanolamine (MEA) capture processes

Resilience-Performance Tradeoff Analysis of a Deep Neural Network Accelerator

Nowadays, Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) are one of the most computationally-intensive algorithms because of the (i) huge amount of data to be transferred from/to the memory, and (ii) the huge amount of matrix multiplications to compute. These issues motivate the design of custom DNN hardware accelerators. These accelerators are widely used for low-latency safety-critical applications such as object detection in autonomous cars. Safety-critical applications have to be resilient with respect to hardware faults and Deep Learning (DL) accelerators are subjected to hardware faults that can cause functional failures, potentially leading to catastrophic consequences. Although DNNs possess a certain level of intrinsic resilience, it varies depending on the hardware on which they are run. The intent of the paper is to assess the resilience of a systolic-array-based DNN accelerator in the presence of hardware faults, in order to identify the architectural parameters that may mainly impact the DNN resilience

Synthesis of easily sinterable ceramic electrolytes based on Bi-doped 8YSZ for IT-SOFC applications

Ceramic electrolytes formed by Bi (4 mol%)-doped 8YSZ, i.e., Y2O3 (8 mol%)-doped ZrO2, were synthesized by a simple co-precipitation route, using ammonia solution as precipitating agent. The amorphous as-synthesized powders convert into zirconia-based single phase with fluorite structure through a mild calcination step at 500 \ub0C. The calcined powders were sintered at very low temperatures (i.e., 900-1100 \ub0C) achieving in both cases very high values of relative densities (i.e., > 95%); the corresponding microstructures were highly homogeneous and characterized by micrometric grains or sub-micrometric grains for sintering at 1100 \ub0C and 900 \ub0C, respectively. Very interesting electrochemical properties were determined by Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) in the best samples. In particular, their total ionic conductivity, recorded at 650 \ub0C, are 6.06 7 10-2S/cm and 4.44 7 10-2S/cm for Bi (4 mol%)-doped 8YSZ sintered at 1100 \ub0C and 900 \ub0C, respectively. Therefore, Bi was proved to be an excellent sintering aid dopant for YSZ, highly improving its densification at lower temperatures while increasing its total ionic conductivity