Benthic indexes applied to intertidal and infralittoral rocky bottoms in relation to the WFD and MSFD: assessing metrics

Currently used benthic indexes for the assessment of Good Ecological Status (GEcS) and Good Environmental Status (GenS) according to European legislations (WFD and MSFD) are reviewed. A total of 16 indexes have been found. The most targeted biocenosis are macroalgal communities. A catalogue of indexes with targeted biocenosis and applied metrics is presented

Microstructure devices for water evaporation

This paper was presented at the 2nd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2009), which was held at Brunel University, West London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, IPEM, the Italian Union of Thermofluid dynamics, the Process Intensification Network, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.Evaporation of liquids is of major interest for many topics in process engineering. One of these is chemical process engineering, where evaporation of liquids and generation of superheated steam is mandatory for numerous processes. Generally, this is performed by use of classical pool boiling and evaporation process equipment, providing relatively limited performance, or by other systems like falling-film evaporators. Due to the advantages of microstructure devices especially in chemical process engineering the interest in microstructure evaporators and steam generators have been increased through the last decade. In this publication different microstructure devices used for evaporation and generation of steam will be described. Starting with simple liquid-heated devices, different types of electrically powered devices containing micro channels as well as non-channel microstructures will be shown. While evaporation of liquids in crossflow and counterflow or co-current flow micro channel devices is possible, it is, in many cases, not possible to obtain superheated steam due to certain boundary conditions. Thus, a new design was proposed to obtain complete evaporation and superheating of the generated steam

Collision avoidance and adaptive path planning in machine tools by matching live image data with a geometric simulation

A major cause for unplanned downtime in small-series machining are collisions. While there are solutions to avoid collisions using geometric simulations, these do not cover collisions caused by setup errors. To address this problem from batch size one, a system has been developed which matches a geometric simulation with image data to detect deviations, modify the simulation and recalculate NC-Code to fit reality. Building on previous work regarding image-preprocessing, an iterative matching algorithm is developed, as well as a microservice based system-architecture which allows the integration of matching, adaptive path planning and collision avoidance simulation. The system is validated on a machining center

Intertidal and subtidal rocky shore sampling methods: a review. Addressing the needs of WFD and MSFD

With European legislations compelling Member States to evaluate their seas, the need of comparable data and methodologies grows. In the intertidal and the subtidal rocky shores, benthic communities (flora and fauna) and macroalgal communities are the most assessed. Strategies and methodologies applied are diverse. Visual censuses are the most used strategy, while quadrats are the most applied methodology. A review of different methods is presented

Numerical investigation of interfacial mass transfer in two phase flows using the VOF method

A mass transfer model is developed using the volume-of-fluid (VOF) method with a piecewise linear interface calculation (PLIC) scheme in ANSYS FLUENT for a free-rising bubble. The mass flow rate is defined via the interface by Fick\u27s law and added into the species equation as a source term in the liquid phase using the user-defined functions (UDFs) in ANSYS FLUENT. The interfacial concentration field for the mass flow rate is discretized by two numerical methods. One of them is based on the calculation of the discretization length between the centroid of the liquid volume and the interface using the liquid void fraction and interface normal vectors at the interface cells, while in the second method the discretization length is approximated using only the liquid void fraction at the interface cells. The influence of mesh size, schemes, and different Schmidt numbers on the mass transfer mechanism is numerically investigated for a free-rising bubble. Comparison of the developed mass transfer model with the theoretical results shows reasonable and consistent results with a smaller time-step size and with cell size

Identifying predictive features of autism spectrum disorders in a clinical sample of adolescents and adults using machine learning

Diagnosing autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a complicated, time-consuming process which is particularly challenging in older individuals. One of the most widely used behavioral diagnostic tools is the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS). Previous work using machine learning techniques suggested that ASD detection in children can be achieved with substantially fewer items than the original ADOS. Here, we expand on this work with a specific focus on adolescents and adults as assessed with the ADOS Module 4. We used a machine learning algorithm (support vector machine) to examine whether ASD detection can be improved by identifying a subset of behavioral features from the ADOS Module 4 in a routine clinical sample of N = 673 high-functioning adolescents and adults with ASD (n = 385) and individuals with suspected ASD but other best-estimate or no psychiatric diagnoses (n = 288). We identified reduced subsets of 5 behavioral features for the whole sample as well as age subgroups (adolescents vs. adults) that showed good specificity and sensitivity and reached performance close to that of the existing ADOS algorithm and the full ADOS, with no significant differences in overall performance. These results may help to improve the complicated diagnostic process of ASD by encouraging future efforts to develop novel diagnostic instruments for ASD detection based on the identified constructs as well as aiding clinicians in the difficult question of differential diagnosis