Recycling of carbon fibre composites

A clear case for carbon fibre recovery and reuse exists on environmental grounds due to the high cost and energy use of virgin fibre production. On a specific energy basis, carbon fibres can be recovered at around 10% of the energy required to manufacture virgin fibres but the scale of the recovery process can make a large difference to overall cost effectiveness. This study will describe the technical and economic challenges associated with the recycling of carbon fibres, the state of the art in recycling technologies and the re-use of fibres in high performance composites

Ethnographies of the Fairs of Açor Chestnut and Soalheira Cheese

[Resumen] El presente artículo supone la conclusión de una investigación antropológica más amplia que se ha realizado los últimos cuatro años (2014-2017) sobre diversas fiestas del Municipio de Fundão (Portugal), concretamente sobre la fiestas de los Cencerros (“Chocalhos”) de Alpedrinha (2014); la Fiesta de la Cereza (“Festa da Cereja”) de Alcongosta (2015); el Festival de los Níscaros (“Festival dos Miscaros ”) de Alcaide (2016) -etnografías ya publicadas-; a las que ahora viene a sumarse para completar el ciclo festivo, el estudio de la Feria del Queso (“Feira do Queijo”) de Soalheira (2017) y la Fiesta de las castañas” de la Maúnça en Açor (2017). El objetivo de la etapa final de tal investigación también ha sido además del de completar el mencionado calendario con el estudio de una de las celebraciones más antiguas y quizá la más genuina (Açor), el de aportar una reflexión final sobre la importancia de estos nuevos rituales en la actualidad realizando un análisis de su estructura, de su evolución y una prospectiva sobre su posible futuro. Ya hemos comprobado cómo estas fiestas, que no son del calendario tradicional religioso, están orientadas al incremento del consumo y el comercio de productos rurales autóctonos de calidad, así como a fomentar el turismo y una identidad positiva para los aldeanos. Y también conocemos que este nuevo ciclo festivo es intencionadamente fomentado por las autoridades municipales. En el artículo se retoman, ya al completo, sus orígenes, sus semejanzas y diferencias, y se ensaya poner de manifiesto las oposiciones del código simbólico estructural de las mismas[Abstract] This article supposes the conclusion of a more extensive anthropological investigation that has been realized in the last four years (2014-2017) on diverse festivals of the Municipality of Fundão (Portugal), concretely on the parties of the "Rattles" of Alpedrinha (2014) ; the "Festival of the cherry" of Alcongosta (2015); the "Mushroom Festival" of Alcaide (2016); and the "the chestnuts festival" of the Maunça in Açor (2017), and now being added to complete the festive cycle, the study of the Cheese Fair in Soalheira. The objective of the final stage of such research has also been to complete the mentioned calendar with the study of one of the oldest and perhaps the most genuine (Açor) celebrations, to provide a final reflection on the importance of these new rituals currently performing an analysis of its structure, its evolution and a prospective about its possible future. We have already seen how these holidays, which are not part of the traditional religious calendar, are aimed at increasing the consumption and trade of quality rural native products, as well as promoting tourism and a positive identity for villagers. And we also know that this new festive cycle is intentionally encouraged by the municipal authorities. This article goes back to its origins, its similarities and differences, and tries to reveal the oppositions of the structural symbolic code of the sam

On interconnecting and orchestrating components in disaggregated data centers:The dReDBox project vision

Computing systems servers-low-or high-end ones have been traditionally designed and built using a main-board and its hardware components as a 'hard' monolithic building block; this formed the base unit on which the system hardware and software stack design build upon. This hard deployment and management border on compute, memory, network and storage resources is either fixed or quite limited in expandability during design time and in practice remains so throughout machine lifetime as subsystem upgrades are seldomely employed. The impact of this rigidity has well known ramifications in terms of lower system resource utilization, costly upgrade cycles and degraded energy proportionality. In the dReDBox project we take on the challenge of breaking the server boundaries through materialization of the concept of disaggregation. The basic idea of the dReDBox architecture is to use a core of high-speed, low-latency opto-electronic fabric that will bring physically distant components more closely in terms of latency and bandwidth. We envision a powerful software-defined control plane that will match the flexibility of the system to the resource needs of the applications (or VMs) running in the system. Together the hardware, interconnect, and software architectures will enable the creation of a modular, vertically-integrated system that will form a datacenter-in-a-box

Collaborative Gaze Channelling for Improved Cooperation During Robotic Assisted Surgery

The use of multiple robots for performing complex tasks is becoming a common practice for many robot applications. When different operators are involved, effective cooperation with anticipated manoeuvres is important for seamless, synergistic control of all the end-effectors. In this paper, the concept of Collaborative Gaze Channelling (CGC) is presented for improved control of surgical robots for a shared task. Through eye tracking, the fixations of each operator are monitored and presented in a shared surgical workspace. CGC permits remote or physically separated collaborators to share their intention by visualising the eye gaze of their counterparts, and thus recovers, to a certain extent, the information of mutual intent that we rely upon in a vis-à-vis working setting. In this study, the efficiency of surgical manipulation with and without CGC for controlling a pair of bimanual surgical robots is evaluated by analysing the level of coordination of two independent operators. Fitts' law is used to compare the quality of movement with or without CGC. A total of 40 subjects have been recruited for this study and the results show that the proposed CGC framework exhibits significant improvement (p<0.05) on all the motion indices used for quality assessment. This study demonstrates that visual guidance is an implicit yet effective way of communication during collaborative tasks for robotic surgery. Detailed experimental validation results demonstrate the potential clinical value of the proposed CGC framework. © 2012 Biomedical Engineering Society.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Real-time crowd density mapping using a novel sensory fusion model of infrared and visual systems

Crowd dynamic management research has seen significant attention in recent years in research and industry in an attempt to improve safety level and management of large scale events and in large public places such as stadiums, theatres, railway stations, subways and other places where high flow of people at high densities is expected. Failure to detect the crowd behaviour at the right time could lead to unnecessary injuries and fatalities. Over the past decades there have been many incidents of crowd which caused major injuries and fatalities and lead to physical damages. Examples of crowd disasters occurred in past decades include the tragedy of Hillsborough football stadium at Sheffield where at least 93 football supporters have been killed and 400 injured in 1989 in Britain's worst-ever sporting disaster (BBC, 1989). Recently in Cambodia a pedestrians stampede during the Water Festival celebration resulted in 345 deaths and 400 injuries (BBC, 2010) and in 2011 at least 16 people were killed and 50 others were injured in a stampede in the northern Indian town of Haridwar (BBC, 2011). Such disasters could be avoided or losses reduced by using different technologies. Crowd simulation models have been found effective in the prediction of potential crowd hazards in critical situations and thus help in reducing fatalities. However, there is a need to combine the advancement in simulation with real time crowd characterisation such as the estimation of real time density in order to provide accurate prognosis in crowd behaviour and enhance crowd management and safety, particularly in mega event such as the Hajj. This paper addresses the use of novel sensory technology in order to estimate people’s dynamic density du ring one of the Hajj activities. The ultimate goal is that real time accurate estimation of density in different areas within the crowd could help to improve the decision making process and provide more accurate prediction of the crowd dynamics. This paper investigates the use of infrared and visual cameras supported by auxiliary sensors and artificial intelligence to evaluate the accuracy in estimating crowd density in an open space during Muslims Pilgrimage to Makkah (Mecca)

Mechanism of Bacterial Inactivation by (+)-Limonene and Its Potential Use in Food Preservation Combined Processes

This work explores the bactericidal effect of (+)-limonene, the major constituent of citrus fruits' essential oils, against E. coli. The degree of E. coli BJ4 inactivation achieved by (+)-limonene was influenced by the pH of the treatment medium, being more bactericidal at pH 4.0 than at pH 7.0. Deletion of rpoS and exposure to a sub-lethal heat or an acid shock did not modify E. coli BJ4 resistance to (+)-limonene. However, exposure to a sub-lethal cold shock decreased its resistance to (+)-limonene. Although no sub-lethal injury was detected in the cell envelopes after exposure to (+)-limonene by the selective-plating technique, the uptake of propidium iodide by inactivated E. coli BJ4 cells pointed out these structures as important targets in the mechanism of action. Attenuated Total Reflectance Infrared Microspectroscopy (ATR-IRMS) allowed identification of altered E. coli BJ4 structures after (+)-limonene treatments as a function of the treatment pH: ß-sheet proteins at pH 4.0 and phosphodiester bonds at pH 7.0. The increased sensitivity to (+)-limonene observed at pH 4.0 in an E. coli MC4100 lptD4213 mutant with an increased outer membrane permeability along with the identification of altered ß-sheet proteins by ATR-IRMS indicated the importance of this structure in the mechanism of action of (+)-limonene. The study of mechanism of inactivation by (+)-limonene led to the design of a synergistic combined process with heat for the inactivation of the pathogen E. coli O157:H7 in fruit juices. These results show the potential of (+)-limonene in food preservation, either acting alone or in combination with lethal heat treatments

PTRF acts as an adipokine contributing to adipocyte dysfunctionality and ectopic lipid deposition

Adipose tissue (AT) expands under obesogenic conditions. Yet, when the growth exceeds a certain limit, AT becomes dysfunctional and surplus lipids start depositing ectopically. Polymerase I and transcription release factor (PTRF) has been proposed as a mechanism leading to a dysfunctional AT by decreasing the adipogenic potential of human adipocyte precursors. However, whether or not PTRF can be secreted by the adipocytes into the bloodstream is not yet known. For this work, PTRF presence was investigated in plasma. We also produced a recombinant PTRF (rPTRF) and examined its impact on the functional interactions between the adipocyte and the hepatocyte in vitro. We demonstrated that PTRF can be found in human plasma, and is at least in part, carried by exosomes. In vitro treatment with rPTRF increased the hypertrophy and senescence of 3T3-L1 adipocytes. In turn, those rPTRF-treated adipocytes increased lipid accumulation in hepatocytes. Lastly, we found a positive correlation between circulating PTRF and the concentration of PTRF in the visceral fat depot. All these findings point toward the presence of an enlarged and dysfunctional visceral adipose tissue which secretes PTRF. This circulating PTRF behaves as an adipokine and may partially contribute to the well-known detrimental effects of visceral fat accumulation

Model based mapping of a novel prototype spark ignition opposed-piston engine

Blower-scavenged opposed-piston two-stroke engines possess inherent thermodynamic advantages over four stroke engines. Increasingly well demonstrated in compression ignition form, they are less so in spark ignition form, where there is clearly room for further investigation. Using CONVERGE® CFD, in this work therefore the fuelling requirements of a novel and under-construction small-displacement, two-stroke, spark-ignition, blower-scavenged opposed-piston engine prototype were estimated using three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics simulations. Trapped air mass values generated from motored simulations were used to populate a fuel-agnostic table of speed/scavenge pressure conditions, which will significantly aid the configuration of the engine ECU. This table was tested using targeted fuelled simulations, based on bulk in-cylinder equivalence ratio. Results indicate it was able to predict the required fuel within ±2 % at 1500 rpm, 120/150/180 kPa and 3000 rpm, 150/180 kPa, within ±10 % at 3000 rpm, 120 kPa and 5000 rpm, 180 kPa, and within ±20 % at 5000 rpm, 150 kPa. It performed less well at 5000 rpm, 120 kPa where it overestimated the required fuel by over 43 %, although this was to be expected given the reduced scavenging performance at high speed, low scavenge pressure conditions. The swirl-imparting geometry also appeared to aid in flame front propagation

La vibración sexual preventiva en poblaciones de Bufo spinulosus de Chile

Se registraron las vibraciones sexuales preventivas en poblaciones de Bufo spinulosus de Chile. El porcentaje de los individuos con este reflejo fué del 100% en Copiapó, Vallenar, Paposo y Santiago de Chile (machos y hembras); del 8% en San Pedro de Atacama (machos y hembras). Hay escasa o nula diferencia entre todas estas poblaciones por la frecuencia vibratoria y su “range” (términos medios entre 4.77 y 4.88 vibr./seg. en los machos; 3.98 y 4.80 en las hembras; “ranges” entre 3_6). La vibración preventiva en esta especie se mantiene como carácter sistemático, acercándola a los Bufo del grupo marinus~paracnemis y arenarum, o alvarius, y también es carácter ambosexual, con diferencia en la contracción muscular entre machos y hembras.All males and females specimens of Bufo spinulosus populations from Copiapó, Vallenar, Paposo and Santiago de Chile, exhibited the warning vibration when handled. Only 8% of specimens from population of San Pedro de Atacama (Puna de Atacama: 2.800 mtr„ Chile), present the same vibration when handled and clasped. Kymograph records were made, and data on counts of vibration per second summarized. The frecuency is low in all these populations (males: 4.77-4.88; females: 3.98 - 4.80), and the taxonomic indicative value of the character was considered.Material digitalizado en SEDICI gracias a la colaboración del Dr. Jorge Williams (FCNM-UNLP).Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Muse