POMIARY HAŁASU GENEROWANEGO PRZEZ ELEKTROWNIE WIATROWE I OCENA ICH WPŁYWU NA ŚRODOWISKO

In the last decades increasing popularity of renewable energy sources, including wind energy, has been observed. Growing interest in that topic convinced authors to present different types of impact of wind turbines on humans and nature, on the basis of literature, field observations and measurements. The results of sound level measurements showed that levels of acceptable environmental noise were not exceeded in the proximity to the residential area (400 m from the closest turbine). In addition, our study showed that the infrasonic levels were below perception and acceptable levels, so according to current knowledge they should not be harmful for humans.W ostatnich latach obserwowany jest ciągły wzrost popularności odnawialnych źródeł energii, w tym turbin wiatrowych. Zwiększające się zainteresowanie tematem skłoniło autorów do zaprezentowania w niniejszym artykule różnych rodzajów oddziaływań turbin na człowieka i przyrodę, bazując na przeglądzie literaturowym, obserwacjach terenowych i pomiarach. Przeprowadzone pomiary hałasu generowanego przez pracujące turbiny wiatrowe REPowerMM92 na farmie w Łękach Dukielskich (woj. Podkarpackie) wykazały, że poziomy dźwięku ustalone w rozporządzeniach nie zostały przekroczone w pobliżu zabudowań oddalonych o 400 m od najbliższej turbiny. Ponadto, pomiary nie wykazały, by infradźwięki generowane przez przedmiotową farmę mogły osiągnąć poziomy, które według dzisiejszej wiedzy są uważane za szkodliwe dla człowieka

Piezoelectric Particulate Composite for Energy Harvesting from Mechanical Vibration

Energy harvesting from mechanical vibration of buildings is usually realized by the use of devices, in which the main element is a prismatic beam with a rectangular cross-section. The beam has been the subject of scientific research; it is usually constructed with a carrying substrate that does not have piezoelectric characteristics and from piezoelectric material. In contrast, this investigation sought to create a beam structure with a piezoelectric composite only. The entire beam structure was made of a prototype piezoelectric particulate composite. Based on courses of voltage obtained in laboratory experiments and known geometry of the specimens, a series of finite element method (FEM) simulations was performed, aiming to estimate the piezoelectric coefficient d31 value at which the mentioned voltage could be achieved. In each specimen, sedimentation caused the formation of two distinct layers: top and bottom. The experiments revealed that the presented prototype piezoelectric particulate composite converts mechanical stress to electric energy in bending mode, which is used in energy harvesting from mechanical vibration. It is self-supporting and thus a carrying substrate is not required in the harvester structure

Sodium alendronate loaded poly(L-lactide-co-glycolide) microparticles immobilized on ceramic scaffolds for local treatment of bone defects

Bone tissue regeneration in critical-size defects is possible after implantation of a three-dimensional scaffold and can be additionally enhanced once the scaffold is enriched with drugs or other factors supporting bone remodelling and healing. Sodium alendronate (Aln), a widely used anti-osteoporosis drug, exhibits strong inhibitory effect on bone resorption performed by osteoclasts. Thus we propose a new approach for the treatment of bone defects in craniofacial region combining biocompatible titanium dioxide (TiO2) scaffolds and poly(L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) microparticles (MPs) loaded with Aln. The MPs were effectively immobilized on the surface of the scaffolds’ pore walls by human recombinant collagen. Drug release from the scaffolds was characterised by initial burst (24 ± 6% of the drug released within first 24 h) followed by a sustained release phase (on average 5 µg of Aln released per day from day 3 to day 18). In vitro tests showed that Aln in concentrations of 5 µg/mL and 2.5 µg/mL was not cytotoxic for MG-63 osteoblast-like cells (viability between 81 ± 6% to 98 ± 3% of control) but it prevented RANKL-induced formation of osteoclast-like cells from macrophages derived from peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs), as shown by reduced fusion capability and decreased TRAP 5b activity (56 ± 5% reduction in comparison control after 8 days of culture). Results show that it is feasible to design the scaffolds providing required doses of Aln inhibiting osteoclastogenesis, reducing osteoclast activity, but not affecting osteoblast functions, which may be beneficial in the treatment of critical-size bone tissue defects

Few-shot bioacoustic event detection: A new task at the DCASE 2021 challenge

Few-shot bioacoustic event detection is a novel area of research that emerged from a need in monitoring biodiversity and animal behaviour: to annotate long recordings, that experts usually can only provide very few annotations for due to the task being specialist and labour-intensive. This paper presents an overview of the first evaluation of few-shot bioacoustic sound event detection, organised as a task of the DCASE 2021 Challenge. A set of datasets consisting of mammal and bird multi-species recordings in the wild, along with class-specific temporal annotations, was compiled for the challenge, for the purpose of training learning-based approaches and for evaluation of the submissions in a few-shot labelled dataset. This paper describes the task in detail, the datasets that were used for both development and evaluation of the submitted systems, along with how system performance was ranked and the characteristics of the best-performing submissions. Some common strategies that the participating teams used are discussed, including input features, model architectures, transferring of prior knowledge, use of public datasets and data augmentation. Ranking for the challenge was based on overall performance of the evaluation set, however in this paper we also present results on each of the subsets of the evaluation set. This new analysis reveals submissions that performed better on specific subsets and gives an insight as to characteristics of the subsets that can influence performance

Few-shot bioacoustic event detection at the DCASE 2023 challenge

International audienceFew-shot bioacoustic event detection consists in detecting sound events of specified types, in varying soundscapes, while having access to only a few examples of the class of interest. This task ran as part of the DCASE challenge for the third time this year with an evaluation set expanded to include new animal species, and a new rule: ensemble models were no longer allowed. The 2023 few shot task received submissions from 6 different teams with F-scores reaching as high as 63% on the evaluation set. Here we describe the task, focusing on describing the elements that differed from previous years. We also take a look back at past editions to describe how the task has evolved. Not only have the F-score results steadily improved (40% to 60% to 63%), but the type of systems proposed have also become more complex. Sound event detection systems are no longer simple variations of the baselines provided: multiple few-shot learning methodologies are still strong contenders for the task