Applied Sciences, Volume 12, Issue 4

The use of ornamental stones has a historical value that makes them strategically precious in Italy; marble can offer high performance in architectural applications, even though the variability of the rock mass requires detailed studies to optimize t...

Farmers are often exposed to risk factors for musculoskeletal disorders through lifting, carrying heavy loads, and sustained or repeated full-body bending. Several relevant studies on ergonomic interventions have been conducted for specific agricultu...

This paper proposes a robust control design method using reinforcement learning for controlling partially-unknown dynamical systems under uncertain conditions. The method extends the optimal reinforcement learning algorithm with a new learning techni...

During the phenomenon of food degradation, several volatile organic compounds are generally released. In particular, due to lipid oxidation in stored and packed meat, hexanal is formed as a typical decomposition product. Therefore, its detection can...

High particulate matter (PM) concentrations in the cleanroom semiconductor factory have become a significant concern as they can damage electronic devices during the manufacturing process. PM can be predicted before becoming more concentrated based o...

The SCADA system, which is widely used in the continuous monitoring and control of the physical process of modern critical infrastructure, relies on the feedback control loop. The remote state estimation system triggers the control algorithm or contr...

Concrete is the most widely used construction material in the world; as such, the best way to promote a more sustainable construction industry is to improve the environmental performance of this material. Since cement production is the main source of...

Road markings must be reflectorised with glass beads to be visible to drivers at night, retro-reflecting light from vehicle’s headlights, which is critical for road safety. Four commonly used types of glass beads were evaluated in a laboratory...

Fluoxetine is an antidepressant widely used to treat depressive and anxiety states. Due to its mode of action in the central nervous system (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI)), it becomes toxic to non-target organisms, leading to changes...

Inclusive and intensive performance analysis of electrical equalizers in a short-reach optical system using four-level pulse amplitude modulation (PAM-4) is presented in this paper. Two equalizers are used—a feedforward equalizer and decision f...

Wind tunnel tests and large eddy simulations were conducted to investigate the dependency of wind forces and flow patterns on the spacing (S) for three tandem prisms with a small height–width ratio H/W = 0.4. At the spacing ratio S/W = 0.7, mea...

Wind energy is one of the most important renewable energy sources in the world. Accurate wind power prediction is of great significance for achieving reliable and economical power system operation and control. For this purpose, this paper is focused...

The viscoplastic flow of magnetorheological fluid in a disc was analyzed based on the Navier–Stokes Momentum Equation, and the yielded and unyielded decomposition surfaces were obtained. For the shear-thinning phenomenon of magnetorheological f...

The article deals with measuring the rolling resistance of two tires Mitas TS04 6.00-16 6PR and Mitas TS05 10.0/75-15.3 10PR on a concrete surface. The measurement was performed in a soil test channel which had to be adjusted for the given purpose. T...

Background—Aircraft inspection is crucial for safe flight operations and is predominantly performed by human operators, who are unreliable, inconsistent, subjective, and prone to err. Thus, advanced technologies offer the potential to overcome...

Multiphase electric motors in cooperation with power semiconductor converters belong to the future of electric drives. This is because of their better properties compared to three-phase motors, such as better fault tolerance. How a multiphase motor w...

Swing-phase dorsiflexion assistance with robotic ankle–foot orthosis could improve toe clearance and limb shortening such that compensatory movements are suppressed. However, facilitating voluntary effort under assistance remains a challenge. I...

The spatial distribution of elements can be regarded as a numerical field of concentration values with a continuous spatial coverage. An active area of research is to discover geologically meaningful relationships among elements from their spatial di...

(1) Background: The mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) of different tissue origins are applied in cell-based chondrogenic regeneration. However, there is a lack of comparability determining the most suitable cell source for the tissue engineering (TE)...

The article discusses the possibility of using computational methods for modelling the size of the injection doses. Polynomial and artificial intelligence methods were used for prediction. The aim of the research was to analyze whether it is possible...

Nanoporous carbon is synthesized on the base of phenol-formaldehyde resin and polyolefin wax, a by-product from industrial production of polyethylene at low pressure. The adsrption of phenol derivates from aqueous solutions on obtained carbon materia...

Mechanical linkage systems are a very important issue for exoskeleton design to meet the required number of angular outputs. In this paper, a new methodology is developed for type synthesis of planar linkages to establish a complete set of one degree...

Several stress-strain models were used to predict the strengths of steel fiber reinforced concrete, which are distinctive of the material. However, insufficient research has been done on the influence of hybrid fiber combinations (comprising two or m...

Active noise control (ANC) systems usually involve a large number of loudspeakers and error microphones in order to achieve noise reduction over an extended region of space. Although fundamentals of ANC theory and principles of ANC methods have been...

Because of their significant energy consumption and its economic and environmental impacts, existing buildings offer decision makers opportunities and challenges at the same time. In fact, there is a worldwide effort to improve the energy performance...

The definitive diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome (OSAS) is made using an overnight polysomnography (PSG) test. This test requires that a patient wears multiple measurement sensors during an overnight hospitalization. However, this setup i...

Additively manufactured particle dampers can significantly improve component damping. However, if designed incorrectly, the damping can be worsened. For the design of additively manufactured particle dampers, there are not yet sufficient design rules...

Background: Metal coordination complexes of polyphenolic compounds have been claimed to have better antioxidant and protection against protein oxidative damage effects than the isolated ligands. Whereas flavonoids have been extensively studied, xanth...

In the present scenario of the fossil fuel crisis, a shift from conventional transportation to electric vehicles (EVs) is the goal, and it is necessary to make it economically feasible. Developing an efficient charger with mid-range power level may s...

Ambient conditions influence human health, emotions, and mental power. Therefore, numerous studies have been conducted in different disciplines on the measurement and control of ambient conditions in classrooms. Moreover, a number of studies identify...

People with congenital and/or acquired disabilities constitute a great number of dependents in today’s society [...]

Amplitude versus offset (AVO) analysis and attributes are frequently utilized during the early stages of exploration when no well has been drilled. However, there are still some drawbacks to this method, including the fact that it involves a substant...

When natural disasters strike, users in the disaster area may be isolated and unable to transmit disaster information to the outside due to the damage of communication facilities. Unmanned aerial vehicles can be exploited as mobile edge servers to pr...

In the electrical discharge machining process, preliminary research has been able to effectively estimate machining accuracy in response to its long machining history and high discharge frequency characteristics. However, when processing abnormalitie...

The scope of this study focuses on the use of two different types of industrial byproducts such as slags (FeNi and Electric Arc Furnace slag) combined with natural sand as concrete aggregates as well as the evaluation of their suitability on the fina...

This research intends to further improve the understanding of vibration damage mechanisms in the wrist area and to establish a more effective biodynamic model of the hand-arm system. Scholars have conducted some research work around the influencing f...

Modifying weathered argillaceous slate (WAS) to fill the subgrades of high-speed railways not only leads to obvious environmental benefits but also significantly saves natural resources. Previous studies have used several additives together with ceme...

We investigated the transmission characteristics of formalin fixed human liver samples in which normal liver tissue and malignant liver tumor were mixed using terahertz (THz) coherent synchrotron radiation at an infrared free-electron laser (FEL) fac...

In this work, we investigate the impact of the transmit aperture selection technique to alleviate the effect of jamming on a free space optical (FSO) communication system. We consider the FSO system to suffer from a jamming signal and Gaussian noise...

The research on driver fatigue detection is of great significance to improve driving safety. This paper proposes a real-time comprehensive driver fatigue detection algorithm based on facial landmarks to improve the detection accuracy, which detects t...

Vojta’s therapy is a widely used approach in both the prevention and therapy of musculoskeletal disorders. Changes in the musculoskeletal system have been described repeatedly, but the principles of the approach have not yet been clarified. The...

Rock failure and instability usually lead to significant engineering disasters. This paper aims to establish an experimental failure criterion to predict rock failure via testing the laser vibration characteristics of marble specimens. Uniaxial compr...

The fractional-order proportional-integral (FOPI) controller tuning rules based on the fractional calculus for the parallel cascade control systems are systematically proposed in this paper. The modified parallel cascade control structure (PCCS) with...

Background and objectives. This paper aimed to evaluate the changes in mean bone density values of the midpalatal suture (MPS) in 392 young patients treated with a rapid palatal expander (RPE) appliance, depending on sex and vertical and sagittal ske...

Accurate human body profiles have many potential applications. Image-based human body profile estimation can be regarded as a fine-grained semantic segmentation problem, which is typically used to locate objects and boundaries in images. However, exi...

We present a laser induced breakdown spectrum of Er II in the near ultraviolet region. To use the spectrum for the evaluation of the transition probabilities, an alloy target with a low content of Er was used to suppress the self-absorption. From the...

The waste-to-energy programs that have taken place in recent years present a daunting picture in terms of sustainable material management. The incineration of much organic and unorganized waste in metropolitan waste treatment facilities is not meet w...

CO₂ technology has been progressively used in the development of shale oil. After injection, CO₂ can react with formation water to form carbonic acid, which then reacts with carbonate and silicate minerals, resulting in changes in porosity and permea...

In this paper, the packed bed dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) with needle-plate electrode configuration is presented to study the effects of electrical parameters, such as pulse duration and pulse rising and falling time, on discharge characterist...

Most electrical transmission lines are located in forests, and currently in South Korea, deregulation has allowed various structures to be built on the ground below transmission lines. Events of fires occurring below high-voltage transmission lines c...