37 research outputs found
Investigation of Gasoline Partially Premixed Combustion with External Exhaust Gas Recirculation
The stringent emission regulations for Internal Combustion Engines (ICEs) spawned a great amount of research in the field of innovative combustion approaches characterized by high efficiency and low emissions. Previous research demonstrate that such promising techniques, named Low-Temperature Combustion (LTC), combine the benefits of Compression Ignition (CI) engines, such as high compression ratio and unthrottled lean mixture, with low engine-out emissions using a properly premixed air-fuel mixture. Due to longer ignition delay and high volatility compared to diesel, gasoline-like fuels show good potential for the generation of a highly premixed charge, which is needed to reach LTC characteristics. In this scenario, gasoline Partially Premixed Combustion (PPC), characterized by the high-pressure direct injection of gasoline, showed good potential for the simultaneous reduction of pollutants and emissions in CI engines. However, previous research on gasoline CI highlight that a key factor for the optimization of both efficiency and pollutants is the proper management of Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR). This work presents the experimental investigation performed running a light-duty CI engine, operated with gasoline PPC, and varying the mass of recirculated gases trapped in the combustion chamber. To guarantee the stability of gasoline autoignition in all the tested conditions, a specific experimental layout has been developed to accurately quantify the amount of trapped residual gases due to the internal and external EGR. The obtained results clearly highlight the impact of EGR on the combustion process and emissions, demonstrating that optimization of charge dilution with EGR is fundamental to guarantee the optimal compromise between efficiency and emissions over the whole operating range
Processing optimization with parallel computing for the J-PET tomography scanner
The Jagiellonian-PET (J-PET) collaboration is developing a prototype TOF-PET
detector based on long polymer scintillators. This novel approach exploits the
excellent time properties of the plastic scintillators, which permit very
precise time measurements. The very fast, FPGA-based front-end electronics and
the data acquisition system, as well as, low- and high-level reconstruction
algorithms were specially developed to be used with the J-PET scanner. The
TOF-PET data processing and reconstruction are time and resource demanding
operations, especially in case of a large acceptance detector, which works in
triggerless data acquisition mode. In this article, we discuss the parallel
computing methods applied to optimize the data processing for the J-PET
detector. We begin with general concepts of parallel computing and then we
discuss several applications of those techniques in the J-PET data processing.Comment: 8 page
Analysis framework for the J-PET scanner
J-PET analysis framework is a flexible, lightweight, ROOT-based software
package which provides the tools to develop reconstruction and calibration
procedures for PET tomography. In this article we present the implementation of
the full data-processing chain in the J-PET framework which is used for the
data analysis of the J-PET tomography scanner. The Framework incorporates
automated handling of PET setup parameters' database as well as high level
tools for building data reconstruction procedures. Each of these components is
briefly discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur
J-PET analysis framework for the prototype TOF-PET detector
Novel TOF-PET scanner solutions demand, apart from the state of the art
detectors, software for fast processing of the gathered data, monitoring of the
whole scanner and reconstruction of the PET image. In this article we present
an analysis framework for the novel STRIP-PET scanner developed by the J-PET
collaboration in the Institute of Physics of the Jagiellonian University. This
software is based on the ROOT package used in many particle physics
experiments.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Policing gender mobilities: interrogating the ‘feminisation of migration’ to Europe
This article proposes a gendered critique of the European Neighbourhood Policy, a framework that, amongst other things, aims to facilitate the mobility of migrants to the EU from the bordering countries. We highlight the ambivalences of European gender and migration regimes, and we take issue with the celebration of the ‘feminisation of migration’. The former fails to offer opportunities to women to safely embark on autonomous migratory projects, the latter contributes to reproduce traditional gender biases in the countries of origin as well as of destination. We conclude by suggesting that the EU critique to emigration countries for failing to tackle women’s discrimination is less than persuasive when assessed vis-á-vis with the curtailment on women’s independent mobility across European borders
The Changing Waves of Migration from the Balkans to Turkey: A Historical Account
Ahmet İçduygu and Deniz Sert tell the history of migration from the Balkans to Turkey from the end of the nineteenth century to the present. They relate this history to nation-building, but also to economic conditions and specific Turkish concerns, such as the perceived need for immigration to compensate for a declining population at that time. They also demonstrate that after 1990, ethnic migration decreased and irregular labour migration became more important
New tools for expression alternative splicing validation
Alternative Splicing is one of the most important research targets in biology because it can explain the remarkably higher complexity of transcriptome and proteome of human and other metazoa with respect to their gene complement. The advent of DNA sequencing made the possibility to save the whole human genome in a ~3Gb database, that bioinformaticians can investigate by using suitable methods for deciphering its informational content. In particular, there is the necessity to develop ad-hoc tools in order to predict and validate possible splicing sites in human genes. Indeed, as a matter of fact recent experiments discovered that almost 15% of genetic diseases is caused by mutations affecting the alternative splicing pattern. This work proposes two tools - GeneParser and BowtieParser - for investigating the alternative splicing pattern, and specifically exon skip events, through the analysis of next generation sequencing data. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg