Air Ambulance: Antimicrobial Power of Bacterial Volatiles

We are currently facing an antimicrobial resistance crisis, which means that a lot of bacterial pathogens have developed resistance to common antibiotics. Hence, novel and innovative solutions are urgently needed to combat resistant human pathogens. A new source of antimicrobial compounds could be bacterial volatiles. Volatiles are ubiquitous produced, chemically divers and playing essential roles in intra- and interspecies interactions like communication and antimicrobial defense. In the last years, an increasing number of studies showed bioactivities of bacterial volatiles, including antibacterial, antifungal and anti-oomycete activities, indicating bacterial volatiles as an exciting source for novel antimicrobial compounds. In this review we introduce the chemical diversity of bacterial volatiles, their antimicrobial activities and methods for testing this activity. Concluding, we discuss the possibility of using antimicrobial volatiles to antagonize the antimicrobial resistance crisis.

Optimization of photoluminescent materials for lighting energy saving in the built environment

In the last decades, fossil fuels have become the primary resource for electricity generation, contributing to the aggravation of problems like global warming and ozone depletion. For this reason, innovative solutions are being continuously developed in order to improve energy efficiency in the construction sector. Beyond heating and cooling, urban lighting plays a significant role on the final energy consumption of a city, including both indoors and outdoors. In this work, photoluminescent materials are investigated as possible light sources to be implemented in urban lighting systems, focusing on the free-cost and renewable luminous gain they provide after being exposed to a proper radiation. In particular, commercially available photoluminescent powders are evaluated by means of spectroradiometric techniques and using a specifically designed experimental setup. Measurements are repeated for different intensities and wavebands of irradiation to identify the most promising “pigment-lamp” combination in terms of (i) luminous intensity and (ii) photoluminescence duration. Results show that the shorter the distance between the emission spectra of the exciting source and the photoluminescent powder, the better the performance of the latter. Therefore, the choice of both afterglow and exciting source cannot be independent from the final system’s application and the required end-use lighting level.

Seismic imaging combining active and passive sources using distributed acoustic sensing

<p>DAS finds growing interest in seismic exploration by offering a dense and low-cost coverage of the area investigated. Nonetheless, contrary to the usual geophones that measure the displacement, DAS provides information on the strain. In this work, we perform quantitative imaging of elastic media designing a new misfit functional that is adapted to these data-sets. This misfit criterion is based on the reciprocity-gap, hence defining the full reciprocity-gap waveform inversion. The main feature of our misfit is that it does not require the knowledge of the exciting source positions, and it allows us to combine data from active and passive (of unknown location) sources. In particular, the data from passive sources contain the low-frequency information needed to build initial models, while the exploration data contain the higher frequencies. We consequently follow a multi-resolution framework that we illustrate with two-dimensional elastic experiments.</p>

An Approximate Inversion Scheme for Surface-Borehole EM in the Presence of Steel Casing. 1D Implementation

An approximate inversion scheme for Surface-Borehole EM data is proposed. The method aims at reducing the computational burden arising by the fine discretization required to accurately solve for the field distribution in the full complexity of the borehole system together with the reservoir medium. I first analyze numerical simulations of the surface-borehole response performed for a 1D layered earth, incorporating also realistic complexity of the borehole system. The analysis brings useful insight on the requirement of incorporating fluid and mud/cement electrical properties when implementing an inversion by numerically simulating the full complexity of the system. Subsequently, the synthetic dataset was used to test an inversion method which uses the data dominated by the casing effect to approximately describe the casing secondary fields. A scaling factor is then introduced to account for the the current induced in the well as the exciting source is placed further below the casing shoe. The method is found to recover fairly well the known 1D resistivity strata, still some bias is expected for the resistivity close below the casing shoe, where the data is anticipated to be most distorted by the casing effect.

Analysis of the Dynamics of Piecewise Linear Memristors

In this paper, we consider a class of flux controlled memristive circuits with a piecewise linear memristor (i.e. the characteristic curve of the memristor is given by a piecewise linear function). The mathematical model is described by a discontinuous planar piecewise smooth differential system, which is defined on three zones separated by two parallel straight lines [Formula: see text] (called as discontinuity lines in discontinuous differential systems). We first investigate the stability of equilibrium points and the existence and uniqueness of a crossing limit cycle for the memristor-based circuit under self-excited oscillation. We then analyze the existence of periodic orbits of forced nonlinear oscillation for the memristive circuit with an external exciting source. Finally, we give numerical simulations to show good matches between our theoretical and simulation results.

Memristor Based van der Pol Oscillation Circuit

The memristor is referred to as the fourth fundamental passive circuit element of which inherent nonlinear properties offer to construct the chaos circuits. In this paper, a flux-controlled memristor circuit is developed, and then a van der Pol oscillator is implemented based on this new memristor circuit. The stability of the circuit, the occurring conditions of Hopf bifurcation and limit circle of the self-excited oscillation are analyzed; meanwhile, under the condition of the circuit with an external exciting source, the circuit exhibits a complicated nonlinear dynamic behavior, and chaos occurs within a certain parameter set. The memristor based van der Pol oscillator, furthermore, has been created by an analog circuit utilizing active elements, and there is a good agreement between the circuit responses and numerical simulations of the van der Pol equation. In the consequence, a new approach has been proposed to generate chaos within a nonautonomous circuit system.

Simulation and Experimental Investigation on the AE Tomography to Improve AE Source Location in the Concrete Structure

Acoustic emission (AE) tomography, which is based on the time-travel tomography with AE events as its signal sources, is a new visualization tool for inspecting and locating the internal damages in the structures. In this paper, AE tomography is applied to examine a man-made damage in a typical heterogeneous concrete structure to validate its effectiveness. Firstly, the finite element (ABAQUS/Explicit) simulation model of the concrete structure with one damaged circle in its center is built, and the simulated AE signals are obtained to establish the AE tomography. The results show that the damaged circle in the created model can be visualized clearly with the AE tomography in its original location. Secondly, the concrete specimen based on the FE model is fabricated, and the pencil lead break (PLB) signal is taken as the exciting source for AE tomography. It is shown that the experimental results have good consistency with the FE simulation results, which also verifies the feasibility of the finite element model for AE tomography. Finally, the damage source location based on AE tomography is compared with the traditional time of arrival (TOA) location method, and the better location accuracy is obtained with the AE tomography. The research results indicate that AE tomography has great potential in the application of structure damage detection.

Active Circulating Current Reduction for Three-Phase Three-Level Modular Photovoltaic Grid-Connected System

According to the active circulating current existing in the three-phase three-level modular photovoltaic grid-connected system, an equivalent model of the active circulating current is built on the basis of the topology and control of the modular system, and the exciting source and the impedance are analyzed in detail. One kind of current-sharing loop is proposed. The error between the average reference current and the feedback current with PI controller is added to the output of the DC voltage loop. Thus the impedance of the active circulating current is enhanced within low frequency range and the active circulating current is reduced effectively. Lastly, A 10kW three-phase three-level modular photovoltaic grid-connected system is built, and experimental results demonstrate the correctness of the model analysis and reduction methods.