Magnetic force microscopy investigation of arrays of nickel nanowires and nanotubes

The magnetic properties of arrays of nanowires (NWs) and nanotubes (NTs), 150 nm in diameter, electrodeposited inside nanoporous polycarbonate membranes are investigated. The comparison of the nanoscopic magnetic force microscopy (MFM) imaging and the macroscopic behavior as measured by alternating gradient force magnetometry (AGFM) is made. It is shown that MFM is a complementary technique that provides an understanding of the magnetization reversal characteristics at the microscopic scale of individual nanostructures. The local hysteresis loops have been extracted by MFM measurements. The influence of the shape of such elongated nanostructures on the dipolar coupling and consequently on the squareness of the hysteresis curves is demonstrated. It is shown that the nanowires exhibit stronger magnetic interactions than nanotubes. The non-uniformity of the magnetization states is also revealed by combining the MFM and AGFM measurements.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

EPR before EPR: a 1930 Einstein-Bohr thought experiment revisited

In 1930 Einstein argued against consistency of the time-energy uncertainty relation by discussing a thought experiment involving a measurement of mass of the box which emitted a photon. Bohr seemingly triumphed over Einstein by arguing that the Einstein's own general theory of relativity saves the consistency of quantum mechanics. We revisit this thought experiment from a modern point of view at a level suitable for undergraduate readership and find that neither Einstein nor Bohr was right. Instead, this thought experiment should be thought of as an early example of a system demonstrating nonlocal "EPR" quantum correlations, five years before the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paper.Comment: 11 pages, revised, accepted for publication in Eur. J. Phy

Disinvestment in healthcare: An overview of HTA agencies and organizations activities at European level

Background: In an era of a growing economic pressure for all health systems, the interest for "disinvestment" in healthcare increased. In this context, evidence based approaches such as Health Technology Assessment (HTA) are needed both to invest and to disinvest in health technologies. In order to investigate the extent of application of HTA in this field, methodological projects/frameworks, case studies, dissemination initiatives on disinvestment released by HTA agencies and organizations located in Europe were searched. Methods: In July 2015, the websites of HTA agencies and organizations belonging to the European network for HTA (EUnetHTA) and the International Network of Agencies for HTA (INAHTA) were accessed and searched through the use of the term "disinvestment". Retrieved deliverables were considered eligible if they reported methodological projects/frameworks, case studies and dissemination initiatives focused on disinvestment in healthcare. Results: 62 HTA agencies/organizations were accessed and eight methodological projects/frameworks, one case study and one dissemination initiative were found starting from 2007. With respect to methodological projects/frameworks, two were delivered in Austria, one in Italy, two in Spain and three in U.K. As for the case study and the dissemination initiative, both came from U.K. The majority of deliverables were aimed at making an overview of existing disinvestment approaches and at identifying challenges in their introduction. Conclusions: Today, in a healthcare context characterized by resource scarcity and increasing service demand, "disinvestment" from low-value services and reinvestment in high-value ones is a key strategy that may be supported by HTA. The lack of evaluation of technologies in use, in particular at the end of their lifecycle, may be due to the scant availability of frameworks and guidelines for identification and assessment of obsolete technologies that was shown by our work. Although several projects were carried out in different countries, most remain constrained to the field of research. Disinvestment is a relatively new concept in HTA that could pose challenges also from a methodological point of view. To tackle these challenges, it is necessary to construct experiences at international level with the aim to develop new methodological approaches to produce and grow evidence on disinvestment policies and practices

Trends in evapotranspiration and its drivers in Great Britain: 1961 to 2015

In a warming climate, the water budget of the land is subject to varying forces such as increasing evaporative demand, mainly through the increased temperature, and changes to the precipitation, which might go up or down. Using a verified, physically based model with 55 years of observation-based meteorological forcing, an analysis of the water budget demonstrates that Great Britain is getting warmer and wetter. Increases in precipitation (2.96.0 ± 2.03 mm yr–1 yr–1) and air temperature (0.20 ± 0.13 K decade–1) are driving increases in runoff (2.18 ± 1.84 mm yr–1 yr–1) and evapotranspiration (0.87 ± 0.55 mm yr–1 yr–1), with no significant trend in the soil moisture. The change in evapotranspiration is roughly constant across the regions, whereas runoff varies greatly between regions: the biggest change is seen in Scotland (4.56 ± 2.82 mm yr–1 yr–1), where precipitation increases were also the greatest (5.4 ± 3.0 mm yr–1 yr–1), and the smallest trend (0.33 ± 1.50 mm yr–1 yr–1, not statistically significant) is seen in the English Lowlands (East Anglia and Midlands), where the increase in rainfall is not statistically significant (1.07 ± 1.76 mm yr–1 yr–1). Relative to its contribution to the evapotranspiration budget, the increase in interception is higher than the other components. This is due to the fact that it correlates strongly with precipitation, which is seeing a greater increase than the potential evapotranspiration. This leads to a higher increase in actual evapotranspiration than the potential evapotranspiration, and a negligible increase in soil moisture or groundwater store

Magnesium and aluminum sulfates in salt efflorescences from acid mine drainage in the Iberian Pyrite Belt (SW Spain)

Proceedings IMWA 2016, Freiberg/Germany | Drebenstedt, Carsten, Paul, Michael (eds.) | Mining Meets Water – Conflicts and Solutions.The current study is focused on AMD-precipitates that compose the typical magnesium and aluminum sulfate assemblages in the Spanish sector of the Iberian Pyrite Belt (SW Spain). The main objectives are identify and describe the composition, morphology and paragenetic relationships of these sulfate phases. From the methodological pint of view, sampling procedure covered the entire metallogenetic province, including five selected representative mines and eight river basins, which are the main receptors of the acid mine drainage discharges. The mineralogical analyses were performed by X-Ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The obtained results showed the extraordinary abundance of aluminum sulfates with acicular habit, from the series pickeringite-apjhonite-halotrichite. They form typical assemblages with other aluminum sulfates, such as alunogen and tamarugite, and with the Mg sulfates: epsomite and hexahydrite. Moreover, the paragenetic relationships indicate the late occurrence of acicular Alsulfates from the halotrichite group.Financial support for this research was provided by the Andalusian Autonomous Government Excellence Project, code P06-RNM-02167. This work was also co-funded by the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund, based on COMPETE 2020 (Programa Operacional da Competitividade e Internacionalização), project ICT (UID/GEO/04683/2013) with reference POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007690 and national funds provided by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Land Use Implications of Expanding Biofuel Demand

The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 will require 36 billion gallons of ethanol to be produced in 2022. The mandates require that 16 of the 36 billion gallons must be produced from cellulosic feedstocks. The potential land use implications resulting from these mandates were examined using two methods, the POLYSYS model and a general equilibrium model. Results of the POLYSYS analysis indicated that 72.1 million tons of corn stover, 23.5 million tons of wheat straw, and 24.7 million acres would be used to produce 109 million tons of switchgrass in 2025 to meet the mandate. Results of the CGE analysis indicated that 10.9 billion bushels of corn grain, 71 million tons of corn stover, and 56,200 tons of switchgrass is needed to meet the mandate.cellulosic ethanol, corn stover, grain ethanol, renewable fuel standard, switchgrass, Crop Production/Industries, Demand and Price Analysis, Environmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy, Q15, Q42,

Contribuições ao projeto de tags chipless de RFID

Orientadores: Yuzo Iano, Leonardo Lorenzo Bravo RogerTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de ComputaçãoResumo: Este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento de um novo ressonador de tipo loop para Frequency Selective Surface (FSS) com a intencao de usa-lo em tags chipless de Radiofrequency Identification (RFID). O ressonador e concebido usando um fractal de Koch invertido de primeira ordem, com a caracteristica geometrica de poder variar o angulo principal do fractal mantendo o comprimento total do perimetro, o que permite manter o comprimento eletrico do ressonador e, em consequencia, manter a frequencia de ressonancia do modelo quase constante. Este comportamento permite niveis apreciaveis de miniaturizacao do ressonador proposto em comparacao ao ressonador quadrado de tipo loop, o qual se torna um caso especial da nossa proposta. O ressonador proposto foi projetado sobre uma superficie Higth Impedance Surface (HIS) o que permite seu uso em aplicacoes de tags chipless de RFID. Foram projetados e simulados varios modelos de ressonadores e multiressonadores (varios ressonadores aninhados) em arranjos de 1x1, 3x1, 3x3, 3x2 mostrando seu potencial para aplicacoes de RFID chipless. Todos os modelos foram construidos e medidos na banda de 7 a 10 ...... em uma guia de onda ..112 mostrando grandes niveis de similitude entre as respostas simuladas e medidas. Tambem foram realizados estudos de multifisica para mostrar a importancia e capacidade de este tipo de estudo na aceleracao do processo de desenvolvimento de sensores tags chipless, dadas as possibilidades que da este tipo de estudo para projetar dispositivos nos que suas respostas possa se correlacionar com as variaveis de interesse a sensarAbstract: This work presents the development of a new loop type resonator for FSS with the intention of being used in RFID tags chipless. The resonator is projected using a first order inverted Koch fractal, with the geometrical particularity of being able to vary the main angle of the fractal maintaining the total length of the perimeter, which allows to maintain the electrical length of the resonator and consequently to maintain almost constant the resonance frequency of the model. This behavior allows obtaining significant levels of miniaturization of the proposed resonator with respect to the square loop type resonator, which also becomes a particular case of our proposal. The resonator was projected on a HIS surface allowing it to be used in applications of RFID tags chipless. Several models of individual resonators and also multiresonators (several nested resonators) were projected and simulated in 1x1, 3x1, 3x3, and 3x2 arrays showing their potential for chipless RFID applications. All models were also constructed and measured in the 7 to 10 GHz band in a waveguide W112 showing large levels of similarity between the simulated responses and the measurements. We also carried out mutiphysical studies to demonstrate the importance and capacity of this type of studies in the acceleration of projects of sensors of tags chipless, given the possibilities that they offer to project devices in which their answers can be correlated with variables of interest to sensingDoutoradoTelecomunicações e TelemáticaDoutor em Engenharia Elétrica15267121CAPE

Association between work related stress and health related quality of life: the impact of socio-demographic variables. A cross sectional study in a region of central Italy

The aim of this work is investigate relationship between health-related quality of life and work-related stress and the impact of gender, education level, and age on this relationship. A cross-sectional study was conducted among workers of various setting in Rome and Frosinone. Work-related stress was measured with a demand-control questionnaire and health-related functioning by SF (short form)-12 health survey. There were 611 participants. Men reported high mental composite summary (MCS) and physical composite summary (PCS). In multivariate analysis age, gender (p < 0.001) and job demand (0.045) predicted low PCS. Low MCS predicted poor PCS. Job demand and educational level resulted negatively associated with MCS. In an analysis stratified for age, gender, and educational level, gender and age resulted effect modifier for MCS, gender and education level for PCS. In women increase of decision latitude predict (p = 0.001) an increase in MCS; a low job demand predict high MCS in male (p ≤ 0.001). In younger workers, a lower level of job demand predicted high MCS (<0.001). For PCS, gender and education level resulted effect modifier. In women, high decision latitude predicted higher PCS (p = 0.001) and lower level of job demand results in higher PCS (p ≤ 0.001). Higher educational level resulted predictor of low PCS. Management of risk about work-related stress should consider socio-demographic factors

Improvement of the Quality Control Plan in the reception of waste glass. Application in Verallia

The objective of the work is the improvement of the current Quality Control Plan in the reception of recycling material (cullet) in a glass factory, to check the conditions of the requirement specifications and, in particular, to reduce the presence of critical contaminants (ceramics, stone, porcelain,…) in the input materia

FASTCUDA: Open Source FPGA Accelerator &amp;amp; Hardware-Software Codesign Toolset for CUDA Kernels

Using FPGAs as hardware accelerators that communicate with a central CPU is becoming a common practice in the embedded design world but there is no standard methodology and toolset to facilitate this path yet. On the other hand, languages such as CUDA and OpenCL provide standard development environments for Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) programming. FASTCUDA is a platform that provides the necessary software toolset, hardware architecture, and design methodology to efficiently adapt the CUDA approach into a new FPGA design flow. With FASTCUDA, the CUDA kernels of a CUDA-based application are partitioned into two groups with minimal user intervention: those that are compiled and executed in parallel software, and those that are synthesized and implemented in hardware. A modern low power FPGA can provide the processing power (via numerous embedded micro-CPUs) and the logic capacity for both the software and hardware implementations of the CUDA kernels. This paper describes the system requirements and the architectural decisions behind the FASTCUDA approach