MonALISA : A Distributed Monitoring Service Architecture

The MonALISA (Monitoring Agents in A Large Integrated Services Architecture) system provides a distributed monitoring service. MonALISA is based on a scalable Dynamic Distributed Services Architecture which is designed to meet the needs of physics collaborations for monitoring global Grid systems, and is implemented using JINI/JAVA and WSDL/SOAP technologies. The scalability of the system derives from the use of multithreaded Station Servers to host a variety of loosely coupled self-describing dynamic services, the ability of each service to register itself and then to be discovered and used by any other services, or clients that require such information, and the ability of all services and clients subscribing to a set of events (state changes) in the system to be notified automatically. The framework integrates several existing monitoring tools and procedures to collect parameters describing computational nodes, applications and network performance. It has built-in SNMP support and network-performance monitoring algorithms that enable it to monitor end-to-end network performance as well as the performance and state of site facilities in a Grid. MonALISA is currently running around the clock on the US CMS test Grid as well as an increasing number of other sites. It is also being used to monitor the performance and optimize the interconnections among the reflectors in the VRVS system.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 8 pages, pdf. PSN MOET00

Materiales activados alcalinamente a base de residuos de vidrio y escoria para aislamiento térmico y acústico

Porous alkali activated materials (AAM), can be obtained from waste glass powder and slag mixtures by alkali activation with NaOH solution. To obtain an adequate porous microstructure, the hardened AAM pastes were thermally treated at temperatures ranging between 900°C and 1000°C, for 60 or 30 minutes. Due to the intumescent behaviour specific for this type of materials, an important increase of the volume and porosity occurs during the thermal treatment. The partial substitution of waste glass powder with slag, determines the increase of compressive strength assessed before (up to 37 MPa) and after (around 10 MPa) thermal treatment; the increase of slag dosage also determines the increase of the activation temperature of the intumescent process (above 950°C). The high porosity and the specific microstructure (closed pores with various shapes and sizes) of these materials recommend them to be utilised as thermal and acoustical insulation materials.Los materiales activados alcalinamente porosos (AAM) se pueden obtener a base de polvo de residuos de vidrio y mezclas de escoria mediante activación alcalina con una solución de hidróxido de sodio (NaOH). Para obtener una microestructura porosa adecuada, las pastas de AAM endurecidas se trataron térmicamente a temperaturas que oscilan entre 900°C y 1000°C durante 60 o 30 minutos. Debido al comportamiento intumescente específico de este tipo de material, se produce un aumento significativo en el volumen y la porosidad durante el tratamiento térmico. La sustitución parcial del polvo de residuos de vidrio por escoria conlleva un aumento en las resistencias a compresión previamente evaluadas (hasta 37 MPa) y después (aproximadamente 10 MPa) del tratamiento térmico; el aumento de la dosis de escoria también determina el aumento de la temperatura de activación del proceso intumescente (por encima de 950°C). La alta porosidad y la microestructura específica de estos materiales recomiendan que se utilicen como materiales de aislamiento térmico y acústico

REVIEW OF THE MAIN EQUIPMENT USED FOR SEPARATING CONTAMINANTS FROM WHEAT SEEDS, CLASSIFICATION ACCORDING TO THEIR FUNCTIONAL ROLE

Wheat seed cleaning require a complex set of operations to be performed in order to remove impurities from the grain mass and obtain high quality final products. These operations are carried out in a technological flow, starting from harvesting until the final processing stage, depending on the crop destination. The stages used to clean the wheat grain are usually following the operations: cleaning in aerodynamic separators, cleaning with sieves, sorting in indent cylinder separator, additional cleaning in special cleaning machines. The paper presents a synthesis of the primary processing phases of wheat seeds for the use in the food industry depending on their functional role

ASPECTS REGARDING BIOMASS FROM ENERGEIC PLANTS (ENERGETIC WILLOW – SALIX MINIMALIS) GRINDING PROCESS FOR PELLETIZATION

          Using energetic plants like energetic willow in the process of developing renewable energy processes, is under heavy research and development by scientists. Energetic crops are subjected to a technological process mainly for easy maneuverability purposes. An important processing phase is energetic plant grinding. The present paper describes researches regarding the grinding process of ha hammer mill using energetic willow as feeding material. 4 types of hammers and 5 grinding speeds were used. Starting from this data the necessary energy consumption for a 5 mm sieve was calculated

ASPECTS REGARDING BIOMASS FROM ENERGEIC PLANTS (ENERGETIC WILLOW – SALIX MINIMALIS) GRINDING PROCESS FOR PELLETIZATION

          Using energetic plants like energetic willow in the process of developing renewable energy processes, is under heavy research and development by scientists. Energetic crops are subjected to a technological process mainly for easy maneuverability purposes. An important processing phase is energetic plant grinding. The present paper describes researches regarding the grinding process of ha hammer mill using energetic willow as feeding material. 4 types of hammers and 5 grinding speeds were used. Starting from this data the necessary energy consumption for a 5 mm sieve was calculated

Clutter modeling in infrared images using genetic programming

Background clutter characterization in infrared imagery has become an actively researched field, and several clutter models have been reported. These models attempt to evaluate the target detection and recognition probabilities that are characteristic of a certain scene when specific target and human visual perception features are known. The prior knowledge assumed and required by these models is a severe limitation. Furthermore, the attempt to model subjective and intricate mechanisms such as human perception with general mathematical formulas is controversial, in this paper, we introduce the idea of adaptive models that are dynamically derived from a set of examples by a supervised learning mechanism based on genetic programming foundations. A set of characteristic scene and target features with a demonstrated influence on the human visual perception mechanism is first extracted from the original images. Then, the correlations between these features and detection performance results obtained by visual observer tests on the same set of images are captured into models by a learning algorithm. The effectiveness of the adaptive modeling principle is discussed in the final part of the paper

Influence of sorghum inclusion in fattening steers diets on health and fatty acids profile of Longissimus dorsi muscle

The study was conducted using 21 Romanian Black Spotted fattening steers to determine the effects of sorghum grains on health and fatty acid profile of Longissimus dorsi muscle. The animals were assigned uniformly to 3 groups of 7 steers each, which received different treatments: control (C) received a compound feed without sorghum grains, experimental group (E1) received 15% sorghum grains in the compound feed, while next experimental group (E2) received 25% sorghum grains in the compound feed. To determine the biochemical parameters, blood samples were collected from animals at the end of experimental period. The laboratory analyses conducted on samples of Longissimus dorsi muscle collected from the 3 experimental groups, showed changes in the fatty acid composition. The proportion of saturated fatty acids (SFA) decreased in favour of the unsaturated fatty acids (UFA) with 1.04% in group E2, while the proportion of unsaturated fatty acids increased from 53.00% in the control group to 54.19% in group E2

INFLUENCE OF THE NUMBER OF PASSES OF AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY ON PENETRATION RESISTANCE AND THE DEGREE OF SOIL COMPACTION

In the context of the ongoing development of mechanized agriculture, which implies the use of heavy agricultural machinery, often on soils with high moisture content, it increased significantly the risk of soil compaction. Compaction has become a problem of major proportions especially to farmers, because this phenomenon causes environmental damage, and affects soil quality and crop production. Penetration resistance is a valuable and easy to determine indicator of the degree of compaction of agricultural soil. In this paper are presented the results of some experimental research conducted to determine the penetration resistance of a plot of clover, under the influence of the number of passes of a tractor, in order to assess, from an qualitative point of view, the degree of soil compaction