Inference on errors in industrial parts: Kriging and variogram versus geometrical product specifications standard

This article focuses on the inference on the errors in manufactured parts controlled by using measurements devices. The characterization of the part surface topographies is core in several applications. A broad set of properties (tribological, optical, biological, mechanical, etc.) depends on the micro- and macrogeometry of the parts. Moreover, parts usually show typical deterministic geometric deviation pattern, referred to as manufacturing signatures, due to the specific manufacturing processes and process setup parameters adopted for their production. In several situations, the measurements may also be affected by systematic errors due to the measurement process, that might be caused, for example, by a poor part alignment during the measurement process. Measurement techniques and characterization methods have been standardized in the International Standard ISO 25178, defining parameters characterizing the surface topography and supplying methods and formula adapt to deal with this issue computationally. In the present article, we consider a type of spatial dependence between measured values at different points that suggest the use of the variogram to identify patterns in the parts. We offer a comparison, based on a real set of measures, between the latter approach and the conventional as a test of the efficient performance of our findings

Fate and Characteristics of Dissolved Organic Nitrogen through Wastewater Treatment Systems

Dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) represents a significant portion (25-80%) of total dissolved nitrogen in the final effluent of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). DON in treated wastewater, once degraded, causes oxygen depletion and/or eutrophication in receiving waters and should be reduced prior to discharge. Biodegradability, bioavailability, and photodegradability are important characteristics of wastewater derived DON and are subjects of research in this dissertation. Four research tasks were performed. In the first task, laboratory-scale chemostat experiments were conducted to examine whether solids retention time (SRT) could be used to control DON and biodegradable DON (BDON) in treated wastewater. Nine different SRTs from 0.3 to 13 were studied. There was no correlation between effluent DON and SRTs. However, BDONs at SRTs of 0.3 to 4 days were comparable and had a decreasing trend with SRTs after that. These results indicate the benefit of high SRTs in term of producing effluent with less BDON. The second task was a comprehensive year-round data collection to study the fate of DON and BDON through the treatment train of a trickling filter (TF) WWTP. The plant removed substantial amounts of DON (62%) and BDON (76%) mainly through the biological process. However, the discharged concentrations in the effluent were still high enough to be critical for a stringent total nitrogen discharge limit (below 5 mg-N/L). Evolution of bioavailable DON (ABDON) along the treatment trains of activated sludge (AS) and TF WWTPs and relationship between ABDON and BDON were examined in the third task. ABDON exerted from a combination of bacteria and algae inocula was higher than algae inoculated ABDON and bacteria inoculated BDON suggesting the use of algae as a treatment organism along with bacteria to minimize effluent DON. The TF and AS WWTPs removed 88% and 64% of ABDON, respectively. In the last task, photodegradable DON (PDON) in primary wastewater and final effluent from TF and AS WWTPs was studied. PDON and BDON fractions of DON data in the final effluent of TF and AS WWTP samples elucidate that photodegradation is as critically important as biodegradation when mineralization of effluent DON is a concern in receiving waters

Generation of 1.5-octave intense infrared pulses by nonlinear interactions in DAST crystal

Infrared pulses with large spectral width extending from 1.2 to 3.4 μ m are generated in the organic crystal DAST (4-N, N-dimethylamino-4′-N′-methylstilbazolium tosylate). The input pulse has a central wavelength of 1.5 μ m and 65 fs duration. With 2.8 mJ input energy we obtained up to 700 μ J in the broadened spectrum. The output can be easily scaled up in energy by increasing the crystal size together with the energy and the beam size of the pump. The ultra-broad spectrum is ascribed to cascaded second order processes mediated by the exceptionally large effective χ 2 nonlinearity of DAST, but the shape of the spectrum indicates that a delayed χ 3 process may also be involved. Numerical simulations reproduce the experimental results qualitatively and provide an insight in the mechanisms underlying the asymmetric spectral broadening

Chronic \u3b1-synuclein accumulation in rat hippocampus induces lewy bodies formation and specific cognitive impairments

Occurrence of Lewy bodies (LBs)/Lewy neurites (LNs) containing misfolded fibrillar a-synuclein (a-syn) is one of the pathologic hallmarks of memory impairment-linked synucleinopathies, such as Parkinson\u2019s disease (PD) and dementia with LBs (DLB). While it has been shown that brainstem LBs may contribute to motor symptoms, the neuropatho-logical substrates for cognitive symptoms are still elusive. Here, recombinant mouse a-syn fibrils were bilaterally injected in the hippocampus of female Sprague Dawley rats, which underwent behavioral testing for sensorimotor and spatial learning and memory abilities. No sensorimotor deficits affecting Morris water maze task performance were observed, nor was any reference memory disturbances detectable in injected animals. By contrast, significant impairments in working memory performance became evident at 12 months postinjection. These deficits were associated to a time-dependent increase in the levels of phosphorylated a-syn at Ser129 and in the stereologically esti-mated numbers of proteinase K (PK)-resistant a-syn aggregates within the hippocampus. Interestingly, pathologic a-syn aggregates were found in the entorhinal cortex and, by 12 months postinjection, also in the vertical limb of the diagonal band and the piriform cortices. No pathologic a-syn deposits were found within the substantia nigra (SN), the ventral tegmental area (VTA), or the striatum, nor was any loss of dopaminergic, noradrenergic, or cholinergic neurons detected in a-syn-injected animals, compared with controls. This would suggest that the behavioral impairmentsseeninthea-syn-injected animals might be determined by the long-term a-syn neuropathology, rather than by neurodegeneration per se, thus leading to the onset of working memory deficits

Evidence of abnormal scalar timing property in alexithymia

: Evidence suggests that incidental modulation of affective states affects the ability to keep track of time. Alexithymia represents an ideal condition to further address the emotion-time processing link, as it refers to a trait characterized by a deficit of affective processing. 31 healthy participants completed an online version of the TAS-20 scale, which measures alexithymia, and a time reproduction task of visual stimuli related to positive (i.e., happiness) and negative (i.e., anger) facial expressions. Results documented a positive correlation between TAS-20 score and the variability in reproducing sub-second durations of the anger expression stimuli We also found an overestimation of sub-second durations of non-affective expressions in borderline/alexithymic participants. Finally, in line with the literature, we confirmed the overall tendency to overestimate the duration of anger expression stimuli. These findings, which can be interpreted in terms of abnormal scalar timing property in alexithymia, expand previous investigations linking this personality trait with abnormal processing of negative emotions. The evidence that alexithymia predicts the reproduction variability of sub-second durations of negative affective stimuli corroborates previous neuroimaging studies documenting cerebellar deficits in these individuals