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Applied Sciences, Volume 11, Issue 15

2021 August-1 - 506 articles

Cover Story: For realistic finger-based object manipulation in augmented reality (AR), haptic rendering of object stiffness is important yet challenging due to the co-presence of real hands, haptic devices, and rendered AR objects. Thus, we propose a novel wearable haptic device, which can generate rigid and elastic haptic feedback in a small form-factor with a simple mechanism to minimize occlusions in the AR scene. Through human-subject experiments in AR, the efficacy of our proposed haptic device is verified/compared against other feedbacks (vibrotactile, visual) for stiffness rendering. View this paper
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Articles (506)

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
4,165 Views
18 Pages

3 August 2021

Rice has long served as the staple food in Asia, and the cultivation of high-yield rice crops draws increasing attention from academic researchers. The prediction of rice growth condition by image features realizes nondestructive prediction and it ha...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
3,355 Views
9 Pages

Optimization of Technological Parameters of Straw Fiber-Based Plant Fiber Seedling Pot Raw Materials

  • Ying Zhang,
  • Qian-Jin Zhu,
  • Shuai Gao,
  • Shuang Liu,
  • Long-Hai Li and
  • Hai-Tao Chen

3 August 2021

Straw fiber seedling pots are a promising substitute for plastic seedling pots. The mixing mode of straw fiber affects the mechanical properties of the raw material membrane of the seedling pot. To explore the processing technology of making the raw...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
12 Citations
3,756 Views
8 Pages

Three-Dimensional Broadband and Isotropic Double-Mesh Twin-Wire Media for Meta-Lenses

  • Hairu Wang,
  • Qiao Chen,
  • Oskar Zetterstrom and
  • Oscar Quevedo-Teruel

3 August 2021

Lenses are used for multiple applications, including communications, surveillance and security, and medical instruments. In homogeneous lenses, the contour is used to control the electromagnetic propagation. Differently, graded-index lenses make use...

  • Article
  • Open Access
18 Citations
4,278 Views
13 Pages

3 August 2021

Conventional analysis techniques and sample preprocessing methods for identifying trace metals in soil and sediment samples are costly and time-consuming. This study investigated the determination and quantification of heavy metals in sediments by us...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
3,011 Views
12 Pages

Vibration Damping Behavior of Composite Laminates Interleaved with PZT- and SMA-Particle-Dispersed Resin Mixture Films

  • Jae-Min Jung,
  • Da-Som Lee,
  • Sung-Ha Kim,
  • Sung-Nam Moon,
  • Woo-Il Lee and
  • Seung-Mo Kim

3 August 2021

In this study, functional particles such as piezoelectric (PZT) ceramic and shape memory alloy (SMA) particles have been incorporated in composite laminates to accelerate the loss of vibration energy. PZT ceramic particles and SMA particles are mixed...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
4,421 Views
13 Pages

Cartilage Repair Activity during Joint-Preserving Treatment May Be Accompanied by Osteophyte Formation

  • Mylène P. Jansen,
  • Simon C. Mastbergen,
  • Fiona E. Watt,
  • Elske J. Willemse,
  • Tonia L. Vincent,
  • Sander Spruijt,
  • Pieter J. Emans,
  • Roel J. H. Custers,
  • Ronald J. van Heerwaarden and
  • Floris P. J. G. Lafeber

3 August 2021

Knee joint distraction (KJD) treatment has shown cartilage repair and clinical improvement in patients with osteoarthritis, as has high tibial osteotomy (HTO). Following KJD, TGFβ-1 and IL-6 were increased in synovial fluid (SF), factors related to c...

  • Article
  • Open Access
16 Citations
6,287 Views
20 Pages

VivesDebate: A New Annotated Multilingual Corpus of Argumentation in a Debate Tournament

  • Ramon Ruiz-Dolz,
  • Montserrat Nofre,
  • Mariona Taulé,
  • Stella Heras and
  • Ana García-Fornes

3 August 2021

The application of the latest Natural Language Processing breakthroughs in computational argumentation has shown promising results, which have raised the interest in this area of research. However, the available corpora with argumentative annotations...

  • Feature Paper
  • Review
  • Open Access
34 Citations
6,106 Views
24 Pages

Theories and Analysis of Functionally Graded Beams

  • J. N. Reddy,
  • Eugenio Ruocco,
  • Jose A. Loya and
  • Ana M. A. Neves

3 August 2021

This is a review paper containing the governing equations and analytical solutions of the classical and shear deformation theories of functionally graded straight beams. The classical, first-order, and third-order shear deformation theories account f...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
4,659 Views
18 Pages

Petri Net-Based Semi-Compiled Code Generation for Programmable Logic Controllers

  • Igor Azkarate,
  • Mikel Ayani,
  • Juan Carlos Mugarza and
  • Luka Eciolaza

3 August 2021

Industrial discrete event dynamic systems (DEDSs) are commonly modeled by means of Petri nets (PNs). PNs have the capability to model behaviors such as concurrency, synchronization, and resource sharing, compared to a step transition function chart o...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
3,978 Views
14 Pages

3 August 2021

Permanent ground displacements/deformations caused by earthquakes can seriously challenge the safety of the nuclear power plants. The state-of-the-art hazard analysis methods provide a fault displacement hazard curve, i.e., the annual probability of...

  • Article
  • Open Access
13 Citations
4,541 Views
17 Pages

Prediction of Dynamic Responses of Flow-Induced Vibration Using Deep Learning

  • Gi-yong Kim,
  • Chaeog Lim,
  • Eun Soo Kim and
  • Sung-chul Shin

3 August 2021

Flow-induced vibration (FIV) is a phenomenon in which the flow passing through a structure exerts periodic forces on the structure. Most studies on FIVs focus on suppressing this phenomenon. However, the Marine Renewable Energy Laboratory (MRELab) at...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
4,060 Views
16 Pages

Measuring Students Acceptance and Usability of a Cloud Virtual Desktop Solution for a Programming Course

  • Francisco J. Rodríguez Lera,
  • David Fernández González,
  • Francisco Martín Rico,
  • Ángel Manuel Guerrero-Higueras and
  • Miguel Ángel Conde

3 August 2021

Virtual desktops in cloud scenarios play a significant role in higher education. Nowadays, the idea of moving laboratories to the cloud seems mandatory and it is necessary to maintain students’ commitment in this new scenario. This paper aims at two...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
4,598 Views
16 Pages

3 August 2021

This study addresses the importance of salience placement before or after scotoma development for an efficient target allocation in the visual field. Pre-allocation of attention is a mechanism known to induce a better gaze positioning towards the tar...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
4,426 Views
17 Pages

Virtual and Physical Prototyping of Reconfigurable Parallel Mechanisms with Single Actuation

  • Alexey Fomin,
  • Daniil Petelin,
  • Anton Antonov,
  • Victor Glazunov and
  • Marco Ceccarelli

3 August 2021

The paper presents novel models of reconfigurable parallel mechanisms (RPMs) with a single active degree-of-freedom (1-DOF). The mechanisms contain three to six identical kinematic chains, which provide three (for the tripod) to zero (for the hexapod...

  • Article
  • Open Access
9 Citations
4,227 Views
11 Pages

A Form-Finding Method for Branching Structures Based on Dynamic Relaxation

  • Guigang Tu,
  • Chen Chen,
  • Zaijing Gong and
  • Yueren Wang

3 August 2021

Branching structure is often used as a supporting structure of the grid shell due to its geometrical and force-transferring features, and the rationality of its shape is very important. The “physical” and “numerical” hanging models can be used for th...

  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
5,388 Views
13 Pages

The Influence of Hard- and Software Improvement of Intraoral Scanners on the Implant Transfer Accuracy from 2012 to 2021: An In Vitro Study

  • Alexander Schmidt,
  • Maximiliane Amelie Schlenz,
  • Haoyu Liu,
  • Holger Sebastian Kämpe and
  • Bernd Wöstmann

3 August 2021

This study aimed to investigate the transfer accuracy (trueness and precision) of three different intraoral scanning families using different hardware and software versions over the last decade from 2012 to 2021, compared to a conventional impression...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
3,859 Views
23 Pages

3 August 2021

Swirling impinging jet (SIJ) is considered as an effective means to achieve uniform cooling at high heat transfer rates, and the complex flow structure and its mechanism of enhancing heat transfer have attracted much attention in recent years. The la...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
2,992 Views
12 Pages

3 August 2021

Biosensors are favored devices for the fast and cost-effective detection of biological species without the need for laboratories. Microfluidic integration with biosensors has advanced their capabilities in selectivity, sensitivity, controllability, a...

  • Article
  • Open Access
30 Citations
4,716 Views
17 Pages

Lightweight Blockchain Processing. Case Study: Scanned Document Tracking on Tezos Blockchain

  • Mohamed Allouche,
  • Tarek Frikha,
  • Mihai Mitrea,
  • Gérard Memmi and
  • Faten Chaabane

3 August 2021

To bridge the current gap between the Blockchain expectancies and their intensive computation constraints, the present paper advances a lightweight processing solution, based on a load-balancing architecture, compatible with the lightweight/embedding...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
3,229 Views
13 Pages

3 August 2021

Optimization techniques keep road performance at a good level using a cost-effective maintenance strategy. Thus, the trade-off between cost and road performance is a multi-objective function. This paper offers a new multi-objective stochastic algorit...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
4,038 Views
16 Pages

3 August 2021

Naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) are long-lived radioactive elements such as uranium, thorium, and potassium, and theirdecay products. They are abundant in natural rocks and minerals. In this study, we conducted a radiological dose a...

  • Article
  • Open Access
17 Citations
2,972 Views
15 Pages

3 August 2021

Applying finite-time thermodynamics theory, an irreversible steady flow Lenoir cycle model with variable-temperature heat reservoirs is established, the expressions of power (P) and efficiency (η) are derived. By numerical calculations, the character...

  • Article
  • Open Access
1 Citations
2,112 Views
13 Pages

2 August 2021

Fiber additive will induce the rheological behavior of suspension, resulting in variation in velocity profile and fiber orientation especially for the non-dilute case. Based on the fluid-solid coupling dynamics simulation, it shows that the fiber ori...

  • Article
  • Open Access
21 Citations
3,729 Views
17 Pages

2 August 2021

Wheel flats induce high-impact loads with relevance for the safety of the vehicle in operation as they can contribute to broken axles, hot axle boxes, and damaged rolling bearings and wheels. The high loads also induce damage in the track components...

  • Article
  • Open Access
4 Citations
2,550 Views
15 Pages

2 August 2021

In this paper, a novel method for generating a circularly polarized (CP) quasi-non-diffractive vortex wave carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM), based on the microwave holographic metasurface integrated with a monopole, is proposed. This method is...

  • Article
  • Open Access
53 Citations
4,583 Views
12 Pages

2 August 2021

The solution of robot inverse kinematics has a direct impact on the control accuracy of the robot. Conventional inverse kinematics solution methods, such as numerical solution, algebraic solution, and geometric solution, have insufficient solution sp...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
16 Citations
4,294 Views
16 Pages

A Modular Mobile Robotic Platform to Assist People with Different Degrees of Disability

  • Jose M. Catalan,
  • Andrea Blanco,
  • Arturo Bertomeu-Motos,
  • Jose V. Garcia-Perez,
  • Miguel Almonacid,
  • Rafael Puerto and
  • Nicolas Garcia-Aracil

2 August 2021

Robotics to support elderly people in living independently and to assist disabled people in carrying out the activities of daily living independently have demonstrated good results. Basically, there are two approaches: one of them is based on mobile...

  • Review
  • Open Access
26 Citations
12,843 Views
32 Pages

Geotechnical Design Practices and Soil–Structure Interaction Effects of an Integral Bridge System: A Review

  • Lila Dhar Sigdel,
  • Ahmed Al-Qarawi,
  • Chin Jian Leo,
  • Samanthika Liyanapathirana and
  • Pan Hu

2 August 2021

Integral bridges are a class of bridges with integral or semi-integral abutments, designed without expansion joints in the bridge deck of the superstructure. The significance of an integral bridge design is that it avoids durability and recurring mai...

  • Article
  • Open Access
15 Citations
3,097 Views
16 Pages

Detection Model on Fatigue Driving Behaviors Based on the Operating Parameters of Freight Vehicles

  • Jianfeng Xi,
  • Shiqing Wang,
  • Tongqiang Ding,
  • Jian Tian,
  • Hui Shao and
  • Xinning Miao

2 August 2021

Whether in developing or developed countries, traffic accidents caused by freight vehicles are responsible for more than 10% of deaths of all traffic accidents. Fatigue driving is one of the main causes of freight vehicle accidents. Existing fatigue...

  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,815 Views
15 Pages

2 August 2021

In Korea, the Ministry of Environment and regional environment management agencies conduct environmental impact assessments (EIA) to mitigate and assess the impact of major development projects on the environment. EIA Big Data are used in conjunction...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
86 Citations
30,095 Views
23 Pages

An Integrated SWOT-PESTLE-AHP Model Assessing Sustainability in Adaptive Reuse Projects

  • Ioannis Vardopoulos,
  • Evangelia Tsilika,
  • Efthymia Sarantakou,
  • Antonis A. Zorpas,
  • Luca Salvati and
  • Paris Tsartas

2 August 2021

In the recent past, sustainable development has been considered a major issue for urban and regional studies. Adaptive reuse appears to be a practical solution for sustainable urban development. Beyond and in addition to a conceptual base consistent...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
3,643 Views
12 Pages

Organic Carbon Burial in the Aral Sea of Central Asia

  • Sen Feng,
  • Long Ma,
  • Jilili Abuduwaili,
  • Wen Liu,
  • Galymzhan Saparov and
  • Gulnura Issanova

2 August 2021

The burial of organic carbon in lake sediments plays an important role in the terrestrial carbon cycle. Clarifying the current status of carbon burial in the lakes of Central Asia is of great significance for the application of carbon balance assessm...

  • Article
  • Open Access
10 Citations
3,046 Views
17 Pages

2 August 2021

This paper presents an improved slope stability sensitivity analysis (ISSSA) model that takes anchoring factors into consideration in umbrella-anchored sand and clay slopes under reservoir water level fluctuation. The results of the ISSSA model show...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
14 Citations
3,440 Views
27 Pages

2 August 2021

This article addresses timetable synchronization in public transportation, an important problem in modern smart cities, in order to guarantee a proper quality of service to citizens. Two variants of the bus timetabling synchronization problem conside...

  • Article
  • Open Access
18 Citations
3,991 Views
11 Pages

2 August 2021

In this work, we use a copula-based approach to select the most important features for a random forest classification. Based on associated copulas between these features, we carry out this feature selection. We then embed the selected features to a r...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
2,724 Views
11 Pages

2 August 2021

With the advancement of intelligent compaction technology, real-time quality control has been widely investigated on the subgrade, while it is insufficient on asphalt pavement. This paper aims to estimate the real-time compaction quality of hot mix a...

  • Article
  • Open Access
5 Citations
6,229 Views
13 Pages

A Novel Dental Caries Model Replacing, Refining, and Reducing Animal Sacrifice

  • Amit Wolfoviz-Zilberman,
  • Yael Houri-Haddad and
  • Nurit Beyth

2 August 2021

In vitro and in vivo models simulating the dental caries process enable the evaluation of anti-caries modalities for prevention and treatment. Animal experimentation remains important for improving human and animal health. Nonetheless, reducing anima...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
2 Citations
2,645 Views
13 Pages

2 August 2021

Due to the lack of information about the concept of Tons of Steering Pull (TSP) of many escort tugs, and the lack of research works relating the TSP demanded by a tethered vessel with respect to the TSP provided by tugs, the present paper shows an or...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
4,614 Views
18 Pages

2 August 2021

The imbalance of the currents leaked by CMOS standard cells when different logic values are applied to their inputs can be exploited as a side channel to recover the secrets of cryptographic implementations. Traditional side-channel countermeasures,...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
3,363 Views
18 Pages

Influence of Angiopoietin Treatment with Hypoxia and Normoxia on Human Intervertebral Disc Progenitor Cell’s Proliferation, Metabolic Activity, and Phenotype

  • Muriel C. Bischof,
  • Sonja Häckel,
  • Andrea Oberli,
  • Andreas S. Croft,
  • Katharina A. C. Oswald,
  • Christoph E. Albers,
  • Benjamin Gantenbein and
  • Julien Guerrero

2 August 2021

Increasing evidence implicates intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration as a major contributor to low back pain. In addition to a series of pathogenic processes, degenerated IVDs become vascularized in contrast to healthy IVDs. In this context, angiopo...

  • Article
  • Open Access
24 Citations
5,440 Views
20 Pages

The Evaluation of Historic Building Energy Retrofit Projects through the Life Cycle Assessment

  • Mariarosaria Angrisano,
  • Francesco Fabbrocino,
  • Paola Iodice and
  • Luigi Fusco Girard

2 August 2021

The built environment sector is one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions and resource depletion that contributes to the climate change crisis. The European Commission, in the “Green New Deal”, highlights that the sustainable regeneration/r...

  • Systematic Review
  • Open Access
19 Citations
5,148 Views
20 Pages

Assessment Methods of Usability and Cognitive Workload of Rehabilitative Exoskeletons: A Systematic Review

  • Laura Maria Alessandra La Bara,
  • Luca Meloni,
  • Davide Giusino and
  • Luca Pietrantoni

2 August 2021

Robotic exoskeleton technologies are applied in the medical field to help patients with impaired mobility to recover their motor functions. Relevant literature shows that usability and cognitive workload may influence the patients’ likelihood to bene...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
6,462 Views
26 Pages

2 August 2021

Outbound telemarketing is an efficient direct marketing method wherein telemarketers solicit potential customers by phone to purchase or subscribe to products or services. However, those who are not interested in the information or offers provided by...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
25 Citations
3,832 Views
14 Pages

Sewage Sludge Derived Materials for CO2 Adsorption

  • Marius Gheorghe Miricioiu,
  • Anca Zaharioiu,
  • Simona Oancea,
  • Felicia Bucura,
  • Maria Simona Raboaca,
  • Constantin Filote,
  • Roxana Elena Ionete,
  • Violeta Carolina Niculescu and
  • Marius Constantinescu

2 August 2021

The study tried to contribute to solving two serious environmental issues: CO2 reducing and sewage sludge disposal. Thus, sewage-sludge-derived materials were obtained in order to be evaluated for CO2 adsorption capacity. Therefore, the char resulted...

  • Article
  • Open Access
3 Citations
3,468 Views
20 Pages

2 August 2021

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are being widely utilized for various missions: in both civilian and military sectors. Many of these missions demand UAVs to acquire artificial intelligence about the environments they are navigating in. This perceptio...

  • Article
  • Open Access
35 Citations
5,991 Views
14 Pages

2 August 2021

This work is focused on deep learning methods, such as feedforward neural network (FNN) and convolutional neural network (CNN), for pathological voice detection using mel-frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs), linear prediction cepstrum coefficient...

  • Article
  • Open Access
8 Citations
5,751 Views
18 Pages

2 August 2021

Various factors affecting the construction progress are regarded as bottlenecks giving rise to the project duration overrun. The contractor should combine the project schedule with the plan in order to reduce the uncertainty of the project activities...

  • Feature Paper
  • Article
  • Open Access
2,601 Views
10 Pages

1 August 2021

Optical frequency comb synthesizers with a wide spectral range are an essential tool for many research areas such as spectroscopy, precision metrology, optical communication, and sensing. Recent studies have demonstrated the direct generation of freq...

  • Article
  • Open Access
7 Citations
3,778 Views
14 Pages

Theoretical Global Warming Impact Evaluation of Medium and High Temperature Heat Pumps Using Low GWP Refrigerants

  • Morteza Ghanbarpour,
  • Adrián Mota-Babiloni,
  • Bassam E. Badran and
  • Rahmatollah Khodabandeh

1 August 2021

This study provides a global warming impact analysis of environmentally friendly refrigerants used as replacements for R134a and R245fa. R290, R1234yf, R1234ze(E), R513A and R450A are considered as refrigerants to replace R134a in medium temperature...

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Appl. Sci. - ISSN 2076-3417