Repair of weld defects in thin-walled stainless steel tubes

Hand-operated tool repairs weld defects in large-diameter, thin-walled stainless steel tubes. Tool consists of a three-roll external planisher and an internal backup mandrel, both hydraulically pressurized by hand pumps, and an external restraining mandrel, which keeps the tube from turning during the planishing operations

Gendered patterns in candidates’ campaign fundraising : the case of Italy

The lack of financial resources is an often-cited hurdle for women pursuing political careers. However, empirical analysis of the dynamics of the private funding of women candidates and its potential implications for their political careers is still scant, particularly for countries outside the anglophone regions. This paper contributes to the scholarly debate by focusing on the gendered patterns in campaign fundraising in Italy, where radical changes to the party funding regime and multiple reforms to the electoral laws may have changed the structure of opportunity for fundraising by women candidates. We analyse patterns of private funding for men and women candidates in four national elections between 1996 and 2018. Our analysis, triangulated with semi-structured interviews with women candidates, shows that differences exist in fundraising patterns between male and female candidates in Italy. It reveals differences in the quality of candidates’ fundraising networks and confirms that political affiliation (to right-wing parties) and incumbency have an effect on the amount of donations received, thus granting women candidates greater access to private donations

ANAEROBIC DIGESTION AS CENTRE OF DAIRY LIVESTOCK AND AGRICULTURE INTEGRATION: BASIS FOR MEDIUM-SCALE CDM PROJECTS DEVELOPMENT

Dairy producers should improve their activity with modern production techniques/technologies to meet the requirements of a stricter consumer market. In this sense, crop and livestock systems integration represents an interesting alternative for using the dairy farm available resources. This paper analyses the use of anaerobic digestion as basis for supplying energy, fertilizers and feed needs of a farming unit, by means of digestion products usage: biogas, which can be used in energy conversion systems to provide the required energy for processing/conservation equipment for milk and other farming products; and effluent, that can be used as a replacement for chemical fertilizers and for aquatic plants/fish feeding. Fossil fuels replacement by biogas can be classified as a Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project, and economic resources obtained by carbon credits commercialisation may support the required production modernisation. The paper analyses the anaerobic digestion process, evaluating biogas in medium-scale dairy farms, as well as the quantification of carbon credits generated by introducing proper manure and culture remains management

EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION OF A CAPPILARY TUBE SIMULATION MODEL WITH REFRIGERANT MIXTURES FLOW

This paper presents the experimental validation of a simulation model for refrigerant mixtures flow through capillary tubes. To perform such validation it was built an experimental apparatus using a blow-down process. It was carried out preliminary tests for characterization of experimental parameters: actual capillary tube diameters; relative roughness; and the heat losses in subcooling/quality control system. It was obtained almost 200 experimental points for R-407C (a zeotropic mixture) and R-410A (a near azeotropic mixture). Complete data set for each point consists of the measured pressure and temperature profiles, mass flow rate and mixture composition, as well as subcooling/quality control system inlet and outlet temperatures and heater electric power consumption for tests with two-phase flow capillary tube inlet conditions. Comparison of simulation and experimental data show a good agreement. Main deviations are connected with the delay of vaporization phenomenon occurrence, experimentally verified by the authors

Automated structure detection for distributed process optimization

The design and control of large-scale engineering systems, consisting of a number of interacting subsystems, is a heavily researched topic with relevance both for industry and academia. This paper presents two methodologies for optimal model-based decomposition, where an optimization problem is decomposed into several smaller sub-problems and subsequently solved by augmented Lagrangian decomposition methods. Large-scale and highly nonlinear problems commonly arise in process optimization, and could greatly benefit from these approaches, as they reduce the storage requirements and computational costs for global optimization. The strategy presented translates the problem into a constraint graph. The first approach uses a heuristic community detection algorithm to identify highly connected clusters in the optimization problem graph representation. The second approach uses a multilevel graph bisection algorithm to find the optimal partition, given a desired number of sub-problems. The partitioned graphs are translated back into decomposed sets of sub-problems with a minimal number of coupling constraints. Results show both of these methods can be used as efficient frameworks to decompose optimization problems in linear time, in comparison to traditional methods which require polynomial time.Author E. A. del Rio-Chanona would like to acknowledge CONACyT scholarship No. 522530 for funding this project. Author F. Fiorelli gratefully acknowledges the support from his family. The authors would also 27 like to thank Dr Bart Hallmark, University of Cambridge, for suggesting to employ as a demonstration the chemical system in Example 7.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2016.03.01

FEASIBILITY OF A BRAYTON CYCLE AUTOMOTIVE AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM

The goal of this work is to develop a preliminary analysis on the feasibility of using an alternative automotive air conditioning system based on the Brayton cycle, to be assembled using a turbocompression-intercooling system configuration available in the market. The first step of the analysis was a thermodynamic study to define the system capacity and parameters for selecting the system components. The next step was to select from turbocompressor maps a suitable model for the application, and to determine pressures/temperatures throughout the system in order to evaluate intercooler capacity and select a suitable model available in the market. The impact of the turbocompression system was also analyzed in engine performance. The proposed turbocompression system requires 1,7 kW from the engine, which is very similar to a conventional air conditioning system requirement. In terms of weight, this preliminary analysis indicated that the proposed system is about 1,0 kg heavier than the conventional system. The analysis indicated that the alternative system is about 56% more expensive than the conventional one, but on the other hand presents a 24% lower maintenance cost . Considering the results of the preliminary analysis, the proposed system is technically feasible for application in automotive air conditioning, but requires a design optimization process in order to reduce its weight and initial costs, which might allow lower maintenance costs to payback the alternative system

Edoardo Persico y Giuseppe De Finetti: contradicción y complementariedad del debate italiano en torno a Loos

La labor crítica de Edoardo Persico, orientada a menudo a remarcar el papel educativo de la arquitectura, propuso la obra de Adolf Loos dentro de un discurso no exento de apreciaciones fluctuantes. Por otra parte, Giuseppe de Finetti, único alumno italiano del maestro vienés, procuró avivar el interés de la crítica italiana hacia Loos, llevando a cabo la primera traducción al italiano de sus más influyentes textos teóricos y publicando unos fervorosos relatos que intentaban rescatar la validez y la permanencia de su discurso en el debate arquitectónico moderno. Pese al hecho que Persico y De Finetti expresaban posiciones a veces contrarias en torno a la obra de Loos, sus aportaciones críticas pueden entenderse de forma complementaria en relación con el interés hacia determinados aspectos vivos de la polémica arquitectónica italiana enfocada a la apertura al moderno europeo

Cuando una fotografía se convierte en referente para una nueva arquitectura

Una fotografía puede llegar a ser tan sugerente para un arquitecto hasta convertirse en el referente cultural de su discurso arquitectónico. En efecto las imágenes que pertenecen al bagaje cultural del proyectista generan una herramienta, tal vez subconsciente, capaz de transponerse al proyecto de arquitectura. Para eso no se precisa que la fotografía retraiga una arquitectura construida. Así, a lo largo del camino de la arquitectura del siglo pasado, nos encontramos con proyectos de los que sólo constan algunas fotografías de maqueta y que, sin embargo, han constituido el sustrato fecundo para nuevas aproximaciones proyectuales que han marcado, a su vez, el avance del debate en torno a la arquitectura moderna. La fotografía de la obra primera de Aldo Rossi, la casa ai Ronchi di Versilia, publicada originariamente en Casabella 291 de 1964, representa un caso emblemático de estas interferencias. Se trata de una clara alusión didascálica a Adolf Loos, condensada tanto en términos argumentales como formales en la fotografía de la maqueta de la villa Moissi (Lido de Venecia, 1923), imagen que desde los años treinta ya formaba parte de la iconografía de las publicaciones italianas. De aquella imagen a-temporal y decontextualizada vuelven la desnudez de las fachadas y la articulación de los cuerpos, la simplificación formal y la rotundidad volumétrica. Se hace manifiesta la misma “tensión hacia una forma esencial” que Rossi destacaba para la obra de Adolf Loos, y hasta las fotografías que el mismo arquitecto italiano escogió para su obra parecen forzosamente inspiradas a las conocidas fotos del proyecto loosiano. La imagen que ambos proyectos transmiten es la interpretación culta en un lenguaje moderno del modelo tipológico de la casa mediterránea, la idea de la casa rústica que había llevado Gio Ponti a afirmar que “I moderni d’oggi sono come i «nostri antichi»”.One photograph can be so suggestive for an architect to become the cultural reference of its architectural discourse. Indeed the images which belong to the designer’s cultural background generates a tool, may be in an unconscious way that is able to transpose itself to the architectural design. For that purpose it is not needed that the photograph retracts a constructed architecture. So, along the path of the architecture of the last century, we find projects that only has a few pictures of model, and however, they have constituted the fertile soil for new approaches that have marked, at the same time, the advancing debate on Modern Architecture. The photograph of the first Aldo Rossi´s work, originally published in Casabella 291 in 1964, it represents an emblematic case of these interferences. This is a clear ‘didascalic’ allusion to Adolf Loos, condensed both in plot and in formal terms in the photograph of a model of the Villa Moissi (Lido de Venecia, 1923), picture that since the thirties was part of the iconography of Italian publications. From that timeless and decontextualized image returns the nakedness of the facades and the joint of the elements, the formal simplification and the volumetric rotundity. It becomes manifest the same “tension towards to an essential form”, that Rossi highlighted for the Adolf Loos’s work, and even the photographs that the Italian architect has chosen for his work, they seem necessarily inspired by the well-known photographs of the loosian project. The image that both projects transmit is the cultured interpretation in a modern language of the typological model of the Mediterranean house, the idea of the “casa rústica” that have carried Gio Ponti to affirm that “I moderni d’oggi sono come i «nostri antichi»”

Construction of global optimization constrained NLP test cases from unconstrained problems

This paper presents a novel construction technique for constrained nonconvex Nonlinear Programming Problem (NLP) test cases, derived from the evaluation tree structure of standardized bound constrained problems for which the global solution is known. It is demonstrated in a step-by-step procedure how first an equality constrained problem can be derived from an unconstrained one, with bounds imposed on all variables, using the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) of the unconstrained objective function and the use of interval arithmetic to derive bounds for the new variables introduced. An advantage of the proposed methodology is that several standard unconstrained global optimization test cases can be constructed for varying number of optimization variables, thus leading to adjustable size derived NLP’s. Further to this in a second step it is demonstrated how any subset of the equalities derived can be relaxed into inequalities giving an equivalent optimization problem. Finally, in a third step it is demonstrated how, by reducing the number of equality constraints derived, it is possible to obtain more complex expressions in the constraints and objective function. The methodology is highlighted throughout by motivating examples and a sample code in Mathematica TM is provided in the Appendix.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cherd.2016.03.01

Development of the Italian Version of the National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale It-NIHSS

Background and Purpose-The National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) is a basic component of the assessment of patients with acute stroke. To foster and standardize the use of the NIHSS among Italian health professionals, we translated the scale, dubbed into Italian the training and test videotapes devised by the National Institutes of Health researchers, and conducted a series of certification courses using the translated videos. Methods-Translation, text adaptation, video dubbing, and editing of the Italian NIHSS videotapes relied on a team of bilingual stroke neurologists. Three waves of training courses were organized for mixed classes of medical and nonmedical health professionals. The certification test was based on the usual set of 5 videotaped patients. Scoring rules were those provided by the National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Reliability of the Italian NIHSS was assessed using kappa statistics and compared with that of the original NIHSS. Results-During 3 years, 850 nurses, 460 nonneurologist physicians, and 246 neurologists were trained. Pass rates were respectively 44%, 75%, and 87%, respectively. Overall, 80% of scale items showed moderate to excellent reliability. Independent significant predictors of test failure at multivariate logistic regression were nurse profession (OR, 5.41; 95% CI, 4.07 to 7.20), older age (OR, 1.03; 95% CI, 1.02 to 1.05), and first edition of the course (OR, 3.13; 95% CI, 2.43 to 4.05). The agreement across all items between NIHSS and the Italian NIHSS was 80% (kappa = 0.70 +/- 0.18, z < 0.001). Conclusions-The Italian translation, supervised by experienced vascular neurologists, did not influence the clinimetric characteristics of the NIHSS. Our findings support the implementation of NIHSS video training in languages other than English. (Stroke. 2009; 40: 2557-2559.