Feasibility study of a combi-pv panel for greenhouse energy supply and water recovery by nightly radiation towards the sky

In southern European areas, characterized by high irradiation, the use of water for both evaporative cooling systems and hydroponic fertigation, represents a serious drawback for crop cultivation under cover. Water recovery systems seem to be an attractive solution, especially when they are integrated in the greenhouse construction. In this research, a feasibility study of applying a water recovery system driven by a combi-PV panel, in a semi-closed greenhouse was carried out. The prototype combi-PV panel was made by coupling an amorphous silicon panel with a sump stacked on the rear PV panel surface and filled with saline water. The system is driven by a cold-heat sink which is the PV panel itself. During night, the combi-PV panel exploits the radiative cooling of a ‘gray’ surface towards clear sky, chilling the water in the sump. In opposition, during day-time, the water in the sump is heated at a temperature higher than the environment. Thus, the water vapour will be condensing on the rear panel surface during night, being the warm air circulation facilitated by bouyancy effect. The evaluation of the system is in progress in order to assess the real amount of energy irradiated and consequently the water-drips to be collected on a proper surface inside the sump. The condensed water can be mixed with saline water to reduce the salinity and be used for fertigation

Responsibilities of Judges and Advocates in Civil and Common Law: Some Lingering Misconceptions Concerning Civil Lawsuits

In a period in which an event as interesting and important as the formulationof Principles and Rules of Transnational Civil Procedure by theAmerican Law Institute and the International Institute for the Unificationof Private Law (UNIDROIT) is sternly advancing to accommodate basicprocedural concepts for both the civil and common law systems, a centralproblem faced in such conciliation seems to be that of clarifying the actualroles and responsibilities of judges and lawyers in the conduct of a civildispute. To do so will essentially mean scrutinizing the value and validityof settled conceptions of the inherent features of civil and common lawsystems, including the notion that these systems are basically opposite eachother. In other words, we will attempt to evaluate the correctness and reliability of this assertion, as well as to the unavoidable opposition itincurs

Bike Lane Design: the Context Sensitive Approach

In these days of increasing congestion on roads, bicycles continue to provide a valuable contribution to mobility in Europe. Their relatively small size and low cost enable them to blend efficiently into in the traffic flow while needing less space compared to other vehicles. However, cyclists form one of the most vulnerable groups of road users. So the design of safe infrastructures for all travellers categories, included the cyclists, becomes a primary requirement. To obtain these results, a Context Sensitive Design approach is a very useful tool. In this way, in fact, it is possible to examine a project or existing road, reporting its crash potential and safety performances and detecting its deficiencies, taking into consideration communities and lands which it passes through. In this paper the authors, starting from results collected on a bike lane placed in Rimini, provide useful results for designers, construction and maintenance contractors, in order to obtain safe bike lanes

Clayey materials from the Sierra de la Demanda Range (Spain): their potential as raw materials for the building ceramics industry

This work describes the possible use of thick Early Cretaceous clay deposits, which occur in the southern sector of the Sierra de la Demanda range, as raw materials in the manufacture of ceramic articles. The global mineralogical composition is characterized by high proportions of phyllosilicates and quartz with variable quantities of feldspars, carbonates and hematite. The clay mineralogy differentiates two types of raw materials: illitic clay and kaolinitic-illitic clay. A granulometric distribution in the 2ÿ60 mm fraction, good behaviour during the drying stage and acceptable results in firing tests confirmed that most samples can be utilized as raw material in the building ceramics industry. The range of suitable firing temperatures for these materials is 950ÿ1000ëC, a temperature which needs to be raised for samples with a high percentage of kaolinite and quartz. Moreover, other materials with abundant calcite (20ÿ30%) are suitable for use as modifiers of some properties or colour

Deposits, composition and technological behavior of fluxes for ceramic tiles

The ceramic tile industry is a big consumer of feldspathic rocks and further raw materials able to act as flux during firing. This demand is currently fed with the recourse to a wide range of sources of igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic and metasomatic origin. The main geological features of flux deposits actually exploited by the ceramic industry are reviewed. The chemical and mineralogical composition is described to have a general picture of raw fluxes as well as average data and compositional perimeter for deposits of different origin. Overall beneficiation routes are drawn to trace the compositional path from deposit to commercial flux. The technological behavior in tile-making is shortly overviewed and new experimental data are provided on flux fusibility (by hot-stage microscopy). A chart is proposed to discriminate fluxes according to different fusibility

Rapid variability in TeV blazars: the case of PKS 2155-304

Recent Cherenkov observations of BL Lac objects showed that the TeV flux of PKS 2155-304 changed by a factor 2 in just 3-5 minutes. This fast variability can be accounted for if the emitting region is moving with a bulk Lorentz factor Gamma~50 and a similar relativistic Doppler factor. If this Gamma is adopted, several models can fit the data, but, irrespective of the chosen model, the jet is matter dominated. The Doppler factor requires viewing angles of the order of 1 degree or less: if the entire jet is as narrow as this, then we have problems with current unification schemes. This suggests that there are small active regions, inside a larger jet, moving faster than the rest of the plasma, occasionally pointing at us. Coordinated X-ray/TeV variability can discriminate between the different scenarios.Comment: Minor changes, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letter

Effect of waste glass (TV/PC cathodic tube and screen) on technological properties and sintering behaviour of porcelain stoneware tiles

In the present work, the effects of TV and PC cathodic tube and screen glasses additions (5 and 10 wt.%) to a porcelain stoneware body, in replacement of feldspar, were evaluated simulating the tilemaking process. The presence of glass allows to preserve good technological and mechanical properties, complying with the latest requirements of the industrial practice. The sintering pattern of the glass-added bodies, evaluated by hot stage microscopy, is modified according to the different glass amount and typology; in particular, cathodic tube glass when present at 5 wt.% brings about a lowering of the maximum densification temperature and of the activation energy

Relativistic Beaming and the Intrinsic Properties of Extragalactic Radio Jets

Relations between the observed quantities for a beamed radio jet, apparent transverse speed and apparent luminosity (beta_app,L), and the intrinsic quantities, Lorentz factor and intrinsic luminosity (gamma,L_o), are investigated. The inversion from measured to intrinsic values is not unique, but approximate limits to gamma and L_o can be found using probability arguments. Roughly half the sources in a flux density--limited, beamed sample have a value of gamma close to the measured beta_app. The methods are applied to observations of 119 AGN jets made with the VLBA at 15 GHz during 1994-2002. The results strongly support the common relativistic beam model for an extragalactic radio jet. The (beta_app,L) data are closely bounded by a theoretical envelope, an aspect curve for gamma=32, L_o= 10^25 W/Hz. This gives limits to the maximum values of gamma and L_o in the sample: gamma_max about 32, and L_o,max ~ 10^26 W/Hz. No sources with both high beta_app and low L are observed. This is not the result of selection effects due to the observing limits, which are flux density S>0.5 Jy, and angular velocity mu<4 mas/yr. Many of the fastest quasars have a pattern Lorentz factor gamma_p close to that of the beam, gamma_b, but some of the slow quasars must have gamma_p<<gamma_b. Three of the 10 galaxies in the sample have a superluminal feature, with speeds up to beta_app about 6. The others are at most mildly relativistic. The galaxies are not off-axis versions of the powerful quasars, but Cygnus A might be an exception.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, 1 table, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa

REDISCOVERING CULTURAL HERITAGE SITES BY INTERACTIVE 3D EXPLORATION: A PRACTICAL REVIEW OF OPEN-SOURCE WEBGL TOOLS

Georeferenced reconstructions can help understand the dynamic evolution of the urban context surrounding a historical site, supporting decision-making processes in the field of urban planning. The development of web applications that allow the interaction between 2D and 3D products, as well as their exploration, can facilitate virtual inspections and foster collaboration in digitization of interventions and site evolutions over time. The article discusses how virtual scene reconstructions and visits can provide alternatives to traditional in-situ tourism promotion, through digital storytelling solutions for the exploration of sites. The article also describes how 3D storytelling technologies are currently being used for dissemination cultural heritage sites. The case study of the Castello Farnese, an old XVI century heritage site in Piacenza (Italy), test the adoption of two distinct free and open-source JavaScript WebGL, Potree and Cesium, for the rendering of photogrammetric and laser scanning georeferenced scaled products and for the integration of narrative features such as annotations, camera animations, texts, and other multimedia contents. Potentials and limitations of both tools are discussed in detail, highlighting how they can be implemented for enhancing user experience in virtual tour and exploration of 3D products. In order to guarantee replicability for other case studies, source code of the implemented application is shared on GitHub along with its documentation for contributions

Intermolecular interactions of substituted benzenes on multi-walled carbon nanotubes grafted on HPLC silica microspheres and interaction study through artificial neural networks

Purified multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) grafted onto silica microspheres by gamma-radiation were applied as a HPLC stationary phase for investigating the intermolecular interactions between MWCNTs and substituted benzenes. The synthetic route, simple and not requiring CNTs derivatization, involved no alteration of the nanotube original morphology and physical–chemical properties. The affinity of a set of substituted benzenes for the MWCNTs was studied by correlating the capacity factor (k′) of each probe to its physico-chemical characteristics (calculated by Density Functional Theory). The correlation was found through a theoretical approach based on feedforward neural networks. This strategy was adopted because today these calculations are easily affordable for small molecules (like the analytes), and many critical parameters needed are not known. This might increase the applicability of the proposed method to other cases of study. Moreover, it was seen that the normal linear fit does not provide a good model. The interaction on the MWCNT phase was compared to that of an octadecyl (C18) reversed phase, under the same elution conditions. Results from trained neural networks indicated that the main role in the interactions between the analytes and the stationary phases is due to dipole moment, polarizability and LUMO energy. As expected for the C18 stationary phase correlation, is due to dipole moment and polarizability, while for the MWCNT stationary phase primarily to LUMO energy followed by polarizability, evidence for a specific interaction between MWCNTs and analytes. The CNT-based hybrid material proved to be not only a chromatographic phase but also a useful tool to investigate the MWCNT-molecular interactions with variously substituted benzenes