As part of the Ecodesign framework, the European Union's energy‐labeling scheme has proved to be a powerful tool to communicate with consumers regarding the energy use of products. With sales of ...photovoltaic (PV) modules and small systems set to expand rapidly for the European Union to meet its commitments on CO2 reduction, ensuring that newly installed PV products in the European Union are environmentally friendly and do not create future burdens on the environment is of primary importance. Herein, an innovative methodology in support of a potential energy‐labeling scheme for both PV modules and PV systems (installations) is proposed. The estimated annual and lifetime yields for a PV module and system respectively are used as parameters for classification from A (best) to G (worst) in the proposed scheme. How to “translate” the methodology into a practical energy‐labeling scheme, i.e., for use in EU policy implementing measures, is also discussed. The conceptual challenges of proposing an energy label for energy‐generating products, i.e., PV modules and systems, are also discussed.
Herein, an innovative methodology is proposed in support of a potential energy‐labeling scheme (EU policy) for both photovoltaic modules and systems. The estimated annual and lifetime yields for a photovoltaic module and system respectively are used as parameters for classification from A (best) to G (worst) in the proposed scheme.
This paper discusses of the feasibility of ecodesign requirements on computer servers and presents a case study. Computer servers have been analysed in an ecodesign preparatory study. For the most ...representative products, the least life cycle cost (LLCC) has been identified: it minimizes the total cost of ownership for the consumer and fosters manufacturers to improve their products with existing technologies as well and providing the optimum level from a regulatory perspective. On the basis of the LLCC assessment and related product efficiency level, ecodesign requirements can be proposed, bearing in mind the principle of technology neutrality and pushing the market towards increased efficiency levels. The preparatory study confirmed that computer servers are products responsible for a significant share of electricity consumption in the EU. Ecodesign requirements could result in environmentally effective and sustainable policy options, also from an industry competitiveness perspective. The requirements may cover hardware aspects, in particular efficiency of the power supply units, operating temperature and product's efficiency, both in idle and active state. For the latter, the presence of standardized and accurate testing methods is crucial. Moreover, possible resource efficiency requirements may be proposed, in particular to promote reparability, reusability and recyclability. In order to help identifying the best regulatory approach, several policy options are outlined.
As experience in EcoDesign increases, academic and industry thinking is moving towards the more advanced stages of EcoDesign; moving away from product improvement and product redesign into the more ...holistic approaches of Alternative Function Fulfilment (AFF) and system innovation. This paper investigates how modularity concept, applied to product design, allow much degrees of freedom for the designer, more possibility to reduce environmental impact related to product life-cycle and increase the interaction between LCA and the earlier stages of the (Eco)design process. A method, based on the product modularity concept, to increase LCA usability for the designers is proposed in this paper.
While incremental innovation is for most companies a well assessed process, radical product innovation is often handled with difficulty, mainly due to myriad obstacles in the idea-to cash process ...which limits company’s ability to innovate. As a typical approach, engineers firstly try to find innovative solutions only inside their technological product space, basically thinking accordingly to their commonly assessed know-how. In this paper an industrial case is analyzed, showing how TRIZ methodology offers to technicians a systematic way to solve problematic contradictions and find effective ideas.
In this work, we provide a Machine Learning framework for augmenting the Differentiated Services (DiffServ) protocol with fine-grained dynamic traffic classification. The framework is called ...L-DiffServ. It is composed of two classification algorithms able to detect the QoS classes of incoming packets only looking at three packet header fields; the first algorithm, referred to as Inter-L-DiffServ, is a semi-supervised classification procedure able to replicate DiffServ classification; the second one, referred to as Intra-L-DiffServ, is an unsupervised algorithm for intra-class classification, useful for classes taking large portions of the overall traffic. We apply the latter to the low priority best-effort class. The performance evaluation shows that our solution is able to dynamically classify packets and to detect new QoS sub-classes hence adapting to traffic aggregate characteristics. We also show that network resource management can be improved exploiting the new generated QoS sub-classes: two active queue management algorithms based on WRED and CHOKe show a reduction of the number of sessions affected by packet losses up to 40% with respect to the legacy DiffServ procedure.
Naja atra subsp. atra cardiotoxin 1 (CTX-1), produced by Chinese cobra snakes, belonging to Elapidae family, is included in the three-finger toxin family and exerts high cytotoxicity and ...antimicrobial activity too. Using as template mainly the tip and the subsequent β-strand of the first "finger" of this toxin, different sequences of 20 amino acids linear peptides have been designed in order to avoid toxic effects but to maintain or even strengthen the partial antimicrobial activity already seen for the complete toxin. As a result, the sequence NCP-0 (Naja Cardiotoxin Peptide-0) was designed as ancestor and subsequently 4 other variant sequences of NCP-0 were developed. These synthesized variant sequences have shown microbicidal activity towards a panel of reference and field strains of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. The sequence named NCP-3, and its variants NCP-3a and NCP-3b, have shown the best antimicrobial activity, together with low cytotoxicity against eukaryotic cells and low hemolytic activity. Bactericidal activity has been demonstrated by minimum bactericidal concentration (MBC) assay at values below 10 μg/ml for most of the tested bacterial strains. This potent antimicrobial activity was confirmed even for unicellular fungi Candida albicans, Candida glabrata and Malassezia pachydermatis (MBC 50-6.3 μg/ml), and against the fast-growing mycobacteria Mycobacterium smegmatis and Mycobacterium fortuitum. Moreover, NCP-3 has shown virucidal activity on Bovine Herpesvirus 1 (BoHV1) belonging to Herpesviridae family. The bactericidal activity is maintained even in a high salt concentration medium (125 and 250 mM NaCl) and phosphate buffer with 20% Mueller Hinton (MH) medium against E. coli, methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa reference strains. Considering these in vitro obtained data, the search for active sequences within proteins presenting an intrinsic microbicidal activity could provide a new way for discovering a large number of novel and promising antimicrobial peptides families.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The Network Programming model of SRv6 allows the creation of network programs that can be enforced over traffic flows entering a Segment Routing (SR) domain. A network program is a list of ...instructions that must be applied on a packet traversing the SR domain. Instructions, also known as behaviors, currently available in SRv6 are divided into two main categories: i) topological (e.g., send the packet over the shortest path), and ii) service based (e.g., duplicate the packet). In this paper we introduce a new behavior for the SRv6 Network Programming model, named maximize Throughput (max_T). This function allows to steer an incoming traffic flow toward the egress node over the path that currently guarantees the highest throughput for the flow. The proposed max_T behavior has been implemented over programmable switches, and its effectiveness in improving the performance experienced by flows asking for its application is evaluated through experiments performed over an emulated environment. The preliminary result shows that a 23% reduction of the transfer time for a file over the SR domain is achieved when the max_T behavior is used.
Implicit Robot Force Control Based on Set Invariance Polverini, Matteo Parigi; Nicolis, Davide; Zanchettin, Andrea Maria ...
IEEE robotics and automation letters,
2017-July, 2017-7-00, Letnik:
2, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This paper addresses the problem of robot implicit force control by means of set invariance theory. The proposed control law improves the invariance control approach by avoiding the definition of a ...nominal stabilizing controller, while simultaneously ensuring the absence of output overshoots with respect to the reference. The resulting set invariance based controller is first introduced for a single-input single-output system and then extended to multi-input multi-output systems, in order to be applied to the robot implicit force control problem. Its effectiveness is experimentally validated and compared to state-of-the-art approaches on a hybrid force/position task performed with a 6 DOF industrial robot equipped with a force/torque sensor.
The present paper exploits set invariance theory to address the problem of robot implicit force control in presence of stiffness uncertainty in the interaction model. A numerical approach is ...introduced to compute the invariance function for constraints with arbitrary relative degree. The method is then applied to robot force control, enhancing force regulation performance, in terms of steady state error and convergence speed, despite model mismatch and measurement noise. Its effectiveness is experimentally validated and compared to previous results of set invariance control on a hybrid force/position task performed with a 6 degrees of freedom industrial robot equipped with a force/torque sensor.
PDF
