A Conjugate-heat-transfer Immersed-boundary Method for Turbine Cooling

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Comparative analysis of Iron Age bronze archaeological objects from a Picenum necropolis of Centre Italy with Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis

An archaeological area from the 8th and 7th centuries B.C. has been recently discovered during a rescue excavation near Matelica site (Marche Region, Italy) in the period 1994-2005. Out of the treasures found in the graves, 18 bronze objects have been chosen for Prompt Gamma Activation Analysis (PGAA) at the Budapest Research Reactor (BRR), selected from the 7th century B.C. archaeological founds of Matelica and Fabriano sites. Various investigations, already performed in the same field, have confirmed the applicability of the considered technique and the feasibility of the proposed experiment. Besides determining the major components of the analyzed fragments, some trace elements, such as Sb, As and Ag, have also been identified. The compositions of the different samples have been also compared, in order to gain information regarding possible workshops and provenance. The comparative analysis will be useful, moreover, to establish an eventual classification according to the chemical composition. The obtained results are complementary to those already achieved for the considered objects, including atomic absorption, atomic emission and neutron diffraction

A Systematic Review and Integration of Concept Analyses of Self-Care and Related Concepts

Purpose This systematic review identified, synthesized, and integrated concept analyses on self‐care and related concepts. Design The guidelines for systematic literature reviews of the Joanna Briggs Institute were followed. Methods The Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PubMed, PsycINFO, and EMBASE databases were searched for concept analyses published in the past 20 years. Findings A total of 26 concept analyses were identified that had been published on self‐care, self‐care agency, self‐monitoring, self‐management, self‐management support, symptom management, and self‐efficacy. Differences and commonalities in the examined literature were identified, and a model was delineated, explaining the relations among the various concepts from the nursing perspective. Conclusions The healthcare literature has broadly described self‐care and related concepts; however, consensus on the definitions remains beyond our reach and should not be expected, due to the different perspectives and paradigms from which the concepts are interpreted. From a nursing perspective, self‐care can be considered a broad concept encompassing the other concepts, which describe more specific individual levels of activities and processes. Clinical Relevance Nurses are actively involved in disease management and self‐management support as well as in promoting self‐care in healthy and sick people. Referring to a model on self‐care and related concepts could avoid misinterpretations in nursing practice, research, and policy

Non-destructive characterisation of a Villanovan sword using time-of-flight neutron diffraction

In the present work we report an example application of time-of-flight neutron diffraction for the non-destructive characterisation of ancient bronzes. A Villanovan sword tightly joined to its scabbard by corrosion has been investigated. Data on alloy composition of the different parts and information about the manufacturing techniques have been successfully achieved. The present study is part of an extensive non-destructive investigation program concerning bronze productions of Central Italy during the Iron Age

Photonic integrated reconfigurable linear processors as neural network accelerators

Reconfigurable linear optical processors can be used to perform linear transformations and are instrumental in effectively computing matrix–vector multiplications required in each neural network layer. In this paper, we characterize and compare two thermally tuned photonic integrated processors realized in silicon-on-insulator and silicon nitride platforms suited for extracting feature maps in convolutional neural networks. The reduction in bit resolution when crossing the processor is mainly due to optical losses, in the range 2.3–3.3 for the silicon-on-insulator chip and in the range 1.3–2.4 for the silicon nitride chip. However, the lower extinction ratio of Mach–Zehnder elements in the latter platform limits their expressivity (i.e., the capacity to implement any transformation) to 75%, compared to 97% of the former. Finally, the silicon-on-insulator processor outperforms the silicon nitride one in terms of footprint and energy efficiency