Оцінка дії бальзаму "Трускавецький" в складі стандартного бальнеотерапевтичного комплексу на нейро-гормональну регуляцію у дітей шкільного віку

Бальзам "Трускавецкий", включенный в состав стандартного бальнеотерапевтического комплекса (СБТК) курорта Трускавец, у детей без иммунодефицита реверсирует ваготонический эффект СБТК в симпатотонический и снижает уровень кортизола, не влияя существенно на повышенный уровень альдостерона. У детей с иммунодефицитом симпатотонический и кортизолингибиторный эффекты бальзама проявляются менее отчетливо.Balm "Truskavets'kyi", included in structure of standard balneotherapeutic complex (SB&C) of a spa Truskavets', at children without immunodeficiency reverces vagotonic effect of SBTC in sympathotonic also reduces a cortisol level, not influencing essentially on the increased aldosteron level. At children with immunodeficiency sympathotonic and cortisolinhibiting effects of balm are shown less clearly

Industrial sustainability: Modelling drivers and mechanisms with barriers

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd Sustainability's relevance is constantly increasing among industrial decision makers, policy-makers and scholars. To improve sustainability performance, firms must adopt industrial sustainability measures. These have been proven to positively impact on overall firm's performance, but their rate of adoption is still low, and barriers to their adoption need to be properly tackled by drivers. This work is based on a review of literature on drivers to sustainability and to the areas of occupational health and safety, eco efficiency, and energy efficiency, and contributes to industrial sustainability research presenting a novel framework of drivers. The framework comprehends a model of drivers and a model of mechanisms: the former encompasses previous literature contributions and aims to characterize drivers for the adoption of measures in all areas of industrial sustainability; the latter aims to evaluate if a driver may tackle specific barrier or boost the action of another driver. We conducted a preliminary validation of the framework in nine Italian manufacturing firms. Regarding model of drivers, capacity to represent, usefulness and ease of use were evaluated; concerning model of mechanisms usefulness and ease of use were evaluated. Results seem to be sound with an overall positive evaluation of the framework by all the interviewees. Model of drivers was appreciated for its structure and completeness, and for its ability to enhance knowledge and awareness; model of mechanisms was considered useful for properly foster the adoption of a measure within the firm. The framework could be useful for industrial decision makers and policy-makers to better direct resources and efforts to foster the adoption of industrial sustainability measures

Industrial sustainability performance measurement systems: A novel framework

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd Improved sustainability of industrial activities and measurement of its performance are becoming prime topics of discussion among policy-makers and industrial decision-makers. The current literature proposes a number of performance measurement systems and related indicators, but mainly lacks a real capability to address all sustainability pillars and their intersections, as well as scalability to firms of different sizes, availability of internal resources, and maturity over sustainability issues, suggesting that further research is needed in this area. Building on the literature, our work develops a new framework for the evaluation of industrial sustainability performance, proposing three different Industrial Sustainability Performance Measurement Systems (ISPMSs), with a decreasing number of indicators suitable in different contexts of application. In the framework, selection mechanisms have been conceived and used to reduce the number of indicators considered, while still guaranteeing complete and adequate coverage of all sustainability pillars, as well as their intersections. The framework has been tested through semi-structured case studies in heterogeneous Northern Italian manufacturing firms. The preliminary results are sound as the different ISPMSs proved to be complete, useful, and easy to use. The proposed ISPMSs provide industrial decision-makers with a scalable framework applicable in different contexts, allowing benchmarking and development of specific implementation strategies for increased sustainability, and provide policy-makers with a framework to develop a more effective regulatory policy, better understanding how sustainability performance can be addressed in an integrated manner across industrial firms

Competitiveness of small-medium reactors: A probabilistic study on the economy of scale factor

With steady increase in energy consumption, the vulnerability of the fossil fuel supply, and environmental concerns, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has initiated the Next Generation Nuclear Power Plants (NGNP), also known as Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR). The VHTR is planned to be operational by 2021 with possible demonstration of a hydrogen generating plant. Various engineering design studies on both the reactor plant and energy conversion system are underway. For this and related Generation IV plants, it is the goal to not only meet safety criteria but to also be efficient, economically competitive, and environmentally friendly (proliferation resistant). Traditionally, heat exchanger (HX) design is based on two main approaches: Log-Mean Temperature Difference (LMTD) and effectiveness-NTU (ε-NTU). These methods yield the dimension of the HX under anticipate condition and vice-versa. However, one is not assured that the dimension calculated give the best performing HX when economics are also considered. Here, we develop and show a specific optimization algorithm (exercise) using LMTD and simple (optimal) design theory to establish a reference case for the Printed Circuit Heat Exchanger (PCHE). Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) was further used as a design tool to investigate the optimal design of PCHE thermohydraulic flow. The CFD results were validated against the Blasius correlation before being subjected to optimal design analyses. Benchmark results for the pipe flow indicated that the predictive ability of SST k-ω is superior to the other (standard and RNG k-ε and RSM) turbulence models.The difference between CFD and the empirical expression is less than 10%

Застосування стресового тесту при проведенні трансвагінальної ультрасонографії у вагітних в I та II триместрах вагітності

В статье представлены результаты применения физиологического стрессового теста – смены положения беременной женщины с горизонтального в вертикальное в ходе выполнения трансвагинальной ультрасонографии. Изучены параметры шейки матки и представлены границы их изменений.The article presents the results of applying of a physiological stress-test (the change of a pregnant woman the position from a gorizontal to vertical) during transvaginal ultrasonography. The parameters of cervix uteri and the measures of their changes are performed

Genome variations: Effects on the robustness of neuroevolved control for swarm robotics systems

Manual design of self-organized behavioral control for swarms of robots is a complex task. Neuroevolution has proved a viable alternative given its capacity to automatically synthesize controllers. In this paper, we introduce the concept of Genome Variations (GV) in the neuroevolution of behavioral control for robotic swarms. In an evolutionary setup with GV, a slight mutation is applied to the evolving neural network parameters before they are copied to the robots in a swarm. The genome variation is individual to each robot, thereby generating a slightly heterogeneous swarm. GV represents a novel approach to the evolution of robust behaviors, expected to generate more stable and robust individual controllers, and bene t swarm behaviors that can deal with small heterogeneities in the behavior of other members in the swarm. We conduct experiments using an aggregation task, and compare the evolved solutions to solutions evolved under ideal, noise-free conditions, and to solutions evolved with traditional sensor noise.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Construction task allocation through the collective perception of a dynamic environment

Building structures is a remarkable collective process but its automation remains an open challenge. Robot swarms provide a promising solution to this challenge. However, collective construction involves a number of difficulties regarding efficient robots allocation to the different activities, particularly if the goal is to reach an optimal construction rate. In this paper, we study an abstract construction scenario, where a swarm of robots is engaged in a collective perception process to estimate the density of building blocks around a construction site. The goal of this perception process is to maintain a minimum density of blocks available to the robots for construction. To maintain this density, the allocation of robots to the foraging task needs to be adjusted such that enough blocks are retrieved. Our results show a robust collective perception that enables the swarm to maintain a minimum block density under different rates of construction and foraging. Our approach leads the system to stabilize around a state in which the robots allocation allows the swarm to maintain a tile density that is close to or above the target minimum.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedDorigo, M. Stützle, T. Blesa, M. J. Blum, C. Hamann, H. Heinrich, M. K. & Strobel, V. (2020). Swarm Intelligence: 12th International Conference, ANTS 2020, Barcelona, Spain, October 26-28, 2020, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing AG

New perspectives for sustainable resource and energy use, management and transformation: approaches from green and sustainable chemistry and engineering

The special volume on green and sustainable chemistry and engineering has fourteen papers that were considered relevant to the present day issues and discussion, such as adequate use of raw materials and efficient energy, besides considering renewable sources for materials and energy; and changing economical canons towards circular economy. Businesses, governments and Society are facing a number of challenges to tread the sustainability path and provide wellbeing for future generations. This special volume relevance provides discussions and contributions to foster that desirable future. Chemicals are ubiquitous in everyday activities. Their widespread presence provides benefits to societies’ wellbeing, but can have some deleterious effects. To counteract such effect, green engineering and sustainable assessment in industrial processes have been gathering momentum in the last thirty years. Green chemistry, green engineering, eco-efficiency, and sustainability are becoming a necessity for assessing and managing products and processes in the chemical industry. This special volume presents fourteen articles related to sustainable resource and energy use (five articles), circular economy (one article), cleaner production and sustainable process assessment (five article), and innovation in chemical products (three articles). Green and sustainable chemistry, as well as sustainable chemical engineering and renewable energy sources are required to foster and consolidate a transition towards more sustainable societies. This special volume present current trends in chemistry and chemical engineering, such as sustainable resource and energy use, circular economy, cleaner production and sustainable process assessment, and innovation in chemical products. This special volume provides insights in this direction and complementing other efforts towards such transition

Simulating Kilobots within ARGoS: models and experimental validation

The Kilobot is a popular platform for swarm robotics research due to its low cost and ease of manufacturing. Despite this, the effort to bootstrap the design of new behaviours and the time necessary to develop and debug new behaviours is considerable. To make this process less burdensome, high-performing and flexible simulation tools are important. In this paper, we present a plugin for the ARGoS simulator designed to simplify and accelerate experimentation with Kilobots. First, the plugin supports cross-compiling against the real robot platform, removing the need to translate algorithms across different languages. Second, it is highly configurable to match the real robot behaviour. Third, it is fast and allows running simulations with several hundreds of Kilobots in a fraction of real time. We present the design choices that drove our work and report on experiments with physical robots performed to validate simulated behaviours