B734: Availability of Wood Residue from Processing Plants in Maine

This bulletin presents the results of a survey conducted in Maine to gather data regarding location, availability, and types of primary mill and secondary plant residues currently being generated.https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/aes_bulletin/1070/thumbnail.jp

Reliability of palms security under difficult conditions

ArticleReliability of biometric identification systems is a much discussed topic and nowadays security of premises is very important. The work is focused on palms security research and reliability of the system under adverse conditions, the aim of the measurement was to determine the reliability of readers under adverse conditions that may occur in an industrial environment. Difficult conditions include dirty surface of hand by water, dust, oil and writing accessories. First, a sample measurement was carried out, where the hands of the subjects were washed and thoroughly dried. This measurement was used to compare with measurements under adverse conditions. The results show that the more viscous the fluid the lower the reliability and also dusty hands caused considerably distorted results. The reliability of biometric systems still needs to be improved, as it often happens that the real values do not match the parameters that are declared by the manufacturers. Certain conditions must be met for the proper functioning of palms security, so that identifying persons are allowed access to the protected areas and have not been repeatedly denied

Reliability of parking assistants depending on the material of detected obstacles

ArticleToday's modern vehicles are equipped with a range of assistance systems to enhance road safety. The standard equipment of most cars are parking assistants. It turns out that not always sensors can reliably detect the obstacle on the travel path of the vehicle. The aim of the paper is to determine the reliability of the parking sensors depending on the material of the obstacle detected. The original parking assistants of Škoda Rapid, Škoda Octavia II, and Škoda Superb have been tested in laboratory conditions using obstacles made of various materials (glass, mirror, plastic, metal, cardboard ...) located at distance of 100 cm from the vehicle. Distance values of the original sets of parking assistants were measured during the measurement from onboard diagnostic vehicle using diagnostic kit VAG-COM. The real distance was checked using a calibrated gauge. The results of the research show, that original sets of parking assistants achieve significantly more accurate results with a wider coverage of the space being scanned. Material composition of obstacles has a great influence on the reliability of parking systems. Not every material can respond properly to parking sensors

Technique of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis for sustainable building energy systems performance calculations

Sustainable buildings design process is typical for modeling and simulation usage. The main reason is because there is generally no experience with such buildings and there is lot of new approaches and technical solutions to be used. Computer simulation could be supporting tool in engineering design process and can bring the good way for reducing energy consumption together with optimalization algorithm. For the optimization process we have to know which most sensitive input parametr from many of them has to be investigate. Therefore at first is necessary to perform the sensitivity analysis and find out the "strongest" input parametrs which most affecting the results under observation. Also still the simulation tools are mainly using to predict energy consumption, boiler and chiller loads, indoor air quality, etc. before the building is build. The information about the building envelope, schedule and HVAC components are unclear and can bring large uncertainty in results by setting this inputs to the simulation tools. Paper presents preview of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis. This techniques are shown on case study concretely BESTEST case600 with DRYCOLD climate conditions. Also systems VAV (variable volume of air) and water fancoil system are compared. For this prototype the simulation tool IES was chosen

Radiation-Tolerant Custom Made Low Voltage Power Supply System for ATLAS/TileCal Detector

This paper describes custom made Low Voltage Power Supply (LVPS) system developed for the ATLAS – TileCal detector of the LHC (The Large Hadron Collider) particle accelerator at CERN, Geneva. The system is based on the use of only COTS (Commercial of The Shelf) components, is qualified to be radiation tolerant up to 40krad, and can operate in external DC magnetic field above 0.02 Tesla. The LVPS design described in this paper has been developed and produced for the ATLAS TileCal detector during the years 2001 – 2007

Dynamics of a cantilever beam with piezoelectric sensor: Parameter identification

This work has been supported by the grant 23-06220S of the Czech Science Foundation within institutional support RVO:61388998

Neuro-inflammatory effects of photodegradative products of bilirubin

Phototherapy was introduced in the early 1950\u2019s, and is the primary treatment of severe neonatal jaundice or Crigler-Najjar syndrome. Nevertheless, the potential biological effects of the products generated from the photodegradation of bilirubin during phototherapy remain unknown. This is very relevant in light of recent clinical observations demonstrating that the use of aggressive phototherapy can increase morbidity or even mortality, in extremely low birthweight (ELBW) infants. The aim of our study was to investigate the effects of bilirubin, lumirubin (LR, its major photo-oxidative product), and BOX A and B (its monopyrrolic oxidative products) on the central nervous system (CNS) using in vitro and ex vivo experimental models. The effects of bilirubin photoproducts on cell viability and expression of selected genes were tested in human fibroblasts, three human CNS cell lines (neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y, microglial HMC3, and glioblastoma U-87 cell lines), and organotypic rat hippocampal slices. Neither bilirubin nor its photo-oxidative products affected cell viability in any of our models. In contrast, LR in biologically-relevant concentrations (25\u2009\u3bcM) significantly increased gene expression of several pro-inflammatory genes as well as production of TNF-\u3b1 in organotypic rat hippocampal slices. These findings might underlie the adverse outcomes observed in ELBW infants undergoing aggressive phototherapy

Implementation and validation of ASL perfusion measurements for population imaging

Purpose: Pseudocontinuous arterial spin labeling (pCASL) allows for noninvasive measurement of regional cerebral blood flow (CBF), which has the potential to serve as biomarker for neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases. This work aimed to implement and validate pCASL on the dedicated MRI system within the population-based Rotterdam Study, which was installed in 2005 and for which software and hardware configurations have remained fixed. Methods: Imaging was performed on two 1.5T MRI systems (General Electric); (I) the Rotterdam Study system, and (II) a hospital-based system with a product pCASL sequence. An in-house implementation of pCASL was created on scanner I. A flow phantom and three healthy volunteers (<27 years) were scanned on both systems for validation purposes. The data of the first 30 participants (86 ± 4 years) of the Rotterdam Study undergoing pCASL scans on scanner I only were analyzed with and without partial volume correction for gray matter. Results: The validation study showed a difference in blood flow velocity, sensitivity, and spatial coefficient of variation of the perfusion-weighted signal between the two scanners, which was accounted for during post-processing. Gray matter CBF for the Rotterdam Study participants was 52.4 ± 8.2 ml/100 g/min, uncorrected for partial volume effects of gray matter. In this elderly cohort, partial volume correction for gray matter had a variable effect on measured CBF in a range of cortical and sub-cortical regions of interest. Conclusion: Regional CBF measurements are now included to investigate novel biomarkers in the Rotterdam Study. This work highlights that when it is not feasible to purchase a novel ASL sequence, an in-house implementation is valuable