Soil Conditioning and Ground Monitoring for Shield Tunnelling

Soil conditioning consists of mixing and remolding the natural material during the mechanical excavation of tunnels, generally at low depth, with additives, in order to obtain suitable properties of plasticity and consistency for the excavated material, so becoming able to apply a counterpressure against natural earth pressure and groundwater flow towards the excavation chamber. The assessment and the control of the soil parameters and of machine performance are fundamental for a regular and safe excavation, also with regards to surface stability. This paper mainly focus on testing approach aimed to the proper soil conditioning with EPB shields, whose results have been validated at real scale. The influence of the water content and the amount of conditioning foam has been studied by the Authors. A proper definition of conditioning parameters can allow to extend the application field of Earth Pressure Balance (EPB) tunnel machines to various grain soil distribution, even in weak rock formations (e.g. siltstone or flysch). Importance of conditioning is reflected also on the possibility of a proper spoil disposal or better for its reuse.

Indoor and Outdoor monitoring of photocatalytic activity using a mobile phone app. and a photocatalytic activity indicator ink (paii)

A resazurin (Rz) based photocatalyst activity indicator ink (paii) is used to test the activity of commercial self-cleaning materials. The semiconductor photocatalyst driven colour change of the ink is monitored indoors and outside using a simple mobile phone application that measures the RGB colour components of the digital image of the paii-covered, irradiated sample in real time. The results correlate directly with those generated using a traditional, lab-bound method of analysis (UV–vis spectrophotometry).

Supernova 2012ec: identification of the progenitor and early monitoring with PESSTO

We present the identification of the progenitor of the Type IIP SN 2012ec in archival pre-explosion Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and Advanced Camera for Surveys Wide Field Channel F814W images. The properties of the progenitor are further constrained by non-detections in pre-explosion WFPC2 F450W and F606W images. We report a series of early photometric and spectroscopic observations of SN 2012ec. The r'-band light curve shows a plateau with M_{r^' }}=-17.0. The early spectrum is similar to the Type IIP SN 1999em, with the expansion velocity measured at Hα absorption minimum of -11 700 km s-1 (at 1 d post-discovery). The photometric and spectroscopic evolution of SN 2012ec shows it to be a Type IIP SN, discovered only a few days post-explosion (

Psychopathy and self-monitoring : additive and interactive effects on self-presentation tactics /

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative contributions of psychopathy and self-monitoring to the prediction of self-presentation tactics (behaviours that individuals use to manipulate their self-image). Psychopathy is composed of two main factors: Factor 1, which includes manipulativeness and shallow affect, and Factor 2, which includes irresponsibility and anti-social behaviours. Self-monitoring is a personality trait that distinguishes between those who adapt their behaviour to fit different social situations (high self-monitors) and those who behave as they feel regardless of social expectations (low selfmonitors). It was hypothesized that self-monitoring would moderate the relationship between psychopathy and self-presentation tactics. One hundred and forty-nine university students completed the Self-Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974), the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale - Version III (Paulhus et aI., in press), the Self-Presentation Tactics scale (Lee, S., et aI., 1999), the HEXACO-PI (a measure ofthe six major factors of personality; Lee, K., & Ashton, 2004), and six scenarios that were created as a supplementary measure of the selfpresentation tactics. Results of the hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that self-monitoring did moderate the relationship between psychopathy and three of the selfpresentation tactics: apologies, disclaimers, and exemplification. Further, significant interactions were observed between Factor 1 and self-monitoring on apologies and the defensive tactics subscale, between Factor 2 and self-monitoring on self-handicapping, and between Factor 1 and Factor 2 on exemplification. Contrary to expectations, the main effect of self-monitoring was significant for the prediction of nine tactics, while psychopathy was significant for the prediction of seven tactics. This indicates that the role of these two personality traits in the explanation of self-presentation tactics tends to be additive in nature rather than interactive. In addition. Factor 2 alone did not account for a significant amount of variance in any of the tactics, while Factor 1 significantly predicted nine tactics. Results are discussed with regard to implications and possible directions for future research.

Frontal Lobe Function and Performance Monitoring following Total Sleep Deprivation

Imaging studies have shown reduced frontal lobe resources following total sleep deprivation (TSD). The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in the frontal region plays a role in performance monitoring and cognitive control; both error detection and response inhibition are impaired following sleep loss. Event-related potentials (ERPs) are an electrophysiological tool used to index the brain's response to stimuli and information processing. In the Flanker task, the error-related negativity (ERN) and error positivity (Pe) ERPs are elicited after erroneous button presses. In a Go/NoGo task, NoGo-N2 and NoGo-P3 ERPs are elicited during high conflict stimulus processing. Research investigating the impact of sleep loss on ERPs during performance monitoring is equivocal, possibly due to task differences, sample size differences and varying degrees of sleep loss. Based on the effects of sleep loss on frontal function and prior research, it was expected that the sleep deprivation group would have lower accuracy, slower reaction time and impaired remediation on performance monitoring tasks, along with attenuated and delayed stimulus- and response-locked ERPs. In the current study, 49 young adults (24 male) were screened to be healthy good sleepers and then randomly assigned to a sleep deprived (n = 24) or rested control (n = 25) group. Participants slept in the laboratory on a baseline night, followed by a second night of sleep or wake. Flanker and Go/NoGo tasks were administered in a battery at 1O:30am (i.e., 27 hours awake for the sleep deprivation group) to measure performance monitoring. On the Flanker task, the sleep deprivation group was significantly slower than controls (p's <.05), but groups did not differ on accuracy. No group differences were observed in post-error slowing, but a trend was observed for less remedial accuracy in the sleep deprived group compared to controls (p = .09), suggesting impairment in the ability to take remedial action following TSD. Delayed P300s were observed in the sleep deprived group on congruent and incongruent Flanker trials combined (p = .001). On the Go/NoGo task, the hit rate (i.e., Go accuracy) was significantly lower in the sleep deprived group compared to controls (p <.001), but no differences were found on false alarm rates (i.e., NoGo Accuracy). For the sleep deprived group, the Go-P3 was significantly smaller (p = .045) and there was a trend for a smaller NoGo-N2 compared to controls (p = .08). The ERN amplitude was reduced in the TSD group compared to controls in both the Flanker and Go/NoGo tasks. Error rate was significantly correlated with the amplitude of response-locked ERNs in control (r = -.55, p=.005) and sleep deprived groups (r = -.46, p = .021); error rate was also correlated with Pe amplitude in controls (r = .46, p=.022) and a trend was found in the sleep deprived participants (r = .39, p =. 052). An exploratory analysis showed significantly larger Pe mean amplitudes (p = .025) in the sleep deprived group compared to controls for participants who made more than 40+ errors on the Flanker task. Altered stimulus processing as indexed by delayed P3 latency during the Flanker task and smaller amplitude Go-P3s during the Go/NoGo task indicate impairment in stimulus evaluation and / or context updating during frontal lobe tasks. ERN and NoGoN2 reductions in the sleep deprived group confirm impairments in the monitoring system. These data add to a body of evidence showing that the frontal brain region is particularly vulnerable to sleep loss. Understanding the neural basis of these deficits in performance monitoring abilities is particularly important for our increasingly sleep deprived society and for safety and productivity in situations like driving and sustained operations.

Birding 2.0: Citizen Science and Effective Monitoring in the Web 2.0 World

The amateur birding community has a long and proud tradition of contributing to bird surveys and bird atlases. Coordinated activities such as Breeding Bird Atlases and the Christmas Bird Count are examples of "citizen science" projects. With the advent of technology, Web 2.0 sites such as eBird have been developed to facilitate online sharing of data and thus increase the potential for real-time monitoring. However, as recently articulated in an editorial in this journal and elsewhere, monitoring is best served when based on a priori hypotheses. Harnessing citizen scientists to collect data following a hypothetico-deductive approach carries challenges. Moreover, the use of citizen science in scientific and monitoring studies has raised issues of data accuracy and quality. These issues are compounded when data collection moves into the Web 2.0 world. An examination of the literature from social geography on the concept of "citizen sensors" and volunteered geographic information (VGI) yields thoughtful reflections on the challenges of data quality/data accuracy when applying information from citizen sensors to research and management questions. VGI has been harnessed in a number of contexts, including for environmental and ecological monitoring activities. Here, I argue that conceptualizing a monitoring project as an experiment following the scientific method can further contribute to the use of VGI. I show how principles of experimental design can be applied to monitoring projects to better control for data quality of VGI. This includes suggestions for how citizen sensors can be harnessed to address issues of experimental controls and how to design monitoring projects to increase randomization and replication of sampled data, hence increasing scientific reliability and statistical power.

Electrochemical and sonoelectrochemical monitoring of indigo reduction by glucose

The reduction of indigo (dispersed in water) to leuco-indigo (dissolved in water) is an important industrial process and investigated here for the case of glucose as an environmentally benign reducing agent. In order to quantitatively follow the formation of leuco-indigo two approaches based on (i) rotating disk voltammetry and (ii) sonovoltammetry are developed. Leuco-indigo, once formed in alkaline solution, is readily monitored at a glassy carbon electrode in the mass transport limit employing hydrodynamic voltammetry. The presence of power ultrasound further improves the leuco-indigo determination due to additional agitation and homogenization effects. While inactive at room temperature, glucose readily reduces indigo in alkaline media at 65 degrees C. In the presence of excess glucose, a surface dissolution kinetics limited process is proposed following the rate law d eta(leuco-indigo)/dt = k x c(OH-) x S-indigo where eta(leuco-indigo) is the amount of leuco-indigo formed, k = 4.1 x 10(-9) m s(-1) (at 65 degrees C, assuming spherical particles of I gm diameter) is the heterogeneous dissolution rate constant,c(OH-) is the concentration of hydroxide, and Sindigo is the reactive surface area. The activation energy for this process in aqueous 0.2 M NaOH is E-A = 64 U mol(-1) consistent with a considerable temperature effects. The redox mediator 1,8-dihydroxyanthraquinone is shown to significantly enhance the reaction rate by catalysing the electron transfer between glucose and solid indigo particles. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All fights reserved.

Farmer attitudes and livestock disease: exploring citizenship behaviour and peer monitoring across two BVD control schemes in the UK

The eradication of BVD in the UK is technically possible but appears to be socially untenable. The following study explored farmer attitudes to BVD control schemes in relation to advice networks and information sharing, shared aims and goals, motivation and benefits of membership, notions of BVD as a priority disease and attitudes toward regulation. Two concepts from the organisational management literature framed the study: citizenship behaviour where actions of individuals support the collective good (but are not explicitly recognised as such) and peer to peer monitoring (where individuals evaluate other’s behaviour). Farmers from two BVD control schemes in the UK participated in the study: Orkney Livestock Association BVD Eradication Scheme and Norfolk and Suffolk Cattle Breeders Association BVD Eradication Scheme. In total 162 farmers participated in the research (109 in-scheme and 53 out of scheme). The findings revealed that group helping and information sharing among scheme members was low with a positive BVD status subject to social censure. Peer monitoring in the form of gossip with regard to the animal health status of other farms was high. Interestingly, farmers across both schemes supported greater regulation with regard to animal health, largely due to the mistrust of fellow farmers following voluntary disease control measures. While group cohesiveness varied across the two schemes, without continued financial inducements, longer-term sustainability is questionable

Synergistic acceleration of thyroid hormone degradation by phenobarbital and the PPAR alpha agonist WY14643 in rat hepatocytes

Energy balance is maintained by controlling both energy intake and energy expenditure. Thyroid hormones play a crucial role in regulating energy expenditure. Their levels are adjusted by a tight feed back-control led regulation of thyroid hormone production/incretion and by their hepatic metabolism. Thyroid hormone degradation has previously been shown to be enhanced by treatment with phenobarbital or other antiepileptic drugs due to a CAR-dependent induction of phase 11 enzymes of xenobiotic metabolism. We have recently shown, that PPAR alpha agonists synergize with phenobarbital to induce another prototypical CAR target gene, CYP2B1. Therefore, it was tested whether a PPAR alpha agonist could enhance the phenobarbital-dependent acceleration of thyroid hormone elimination. In primary cultures of rat hepatocytes the apparent half-life of T3 was reduced after induction with a combination of phenobarbital and the PPARa agonist WY14643 to a larger extent than after induction with either Compound alone. The synergistic reduction of the half-life could be attributed to a synergistic induction of CAR and the CAR target genes that code for enzymes and transporters involved in the hepatic elimination of T3, such as OATP1A1, OATP1A3, UGT1A3 and UCT1A10. The PPAR alpha-dependent CAR induction and the subsequent induction of T3-eliminating enzymes might be of physiological significance for the fasting-incluced reduction in energy expenditure by fatty acids as natural PPARa ligands. The synergism of the PPAR alpha agonist WY14643 and phenobarbital in inducing thyroid hormone breakdown might serve as a paradigm for the synergistic disruption of endocrine control by other combinations of xenobiotics. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Pre- and Posttransplant Monitoring of Alloantibodies by Complement-Dependent Cytotoxicity and Luminex Methodologies in Liver Transplantation

Background. This study evaluated the influence of circulating anti-HLA antibodies on outcomes of 97 liver allografts from deceased donors. Methods. Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) antibody screening was performed by both complement-dependent cytotoxicity (CDC) and multiparameter Luminex microsphere-based assays (Luminex assay). Results. The agreements between T- and B- cell CDC and Luminex assays were 67% and 77% for pre- and posttransplant specimens, respectively. Graft dysfunction was not associated with either positive pretransplant CDC or Luminex panel-reactive antibody (PRA) values. Likewise, positive posttransplant T- or B- cell CDC PRA values were not associated with graft dysfunction. In contrast, posttransplant Luminex PRA values were significantly higher among patients with graft dysfunction compared with subjects with good outcomes (P = .017). Conclusion. Posttransplant monitoring of HLA antibodies with Luminex methodology allowed identification of patients at high-risk for poor graft outcomes.

Studies of Heavy Baryons in DELPHI and Radiation Monitoring in DØ

Between the years 1992 and 1995 about 3.5 million hadronic Z decays were collected by the DELPHI detector at CERN. This data has been used to measure the production and lifetime of the beauty strange baryon Ξb, in the inclusive decay channel Ξb →Ξ-ℓ- X. The Ξ- baryon was reconstructed through the decay Ξ- → Λ π-, using a constrained fit method for cascade decays. An iterative discriminant analysis was used for the Ξb selection. A search for the Ξb baryon was also performed using an alternative method of reconstructing the Ξ- baryon. A measurement of the production of the charmed strange baryon Ξc in the decay channel Ξc → Ξ-π+ using the same data is also presented. The radiation monitoring system of the Silicon Microstrip Tracker in the DØ detector is studied and used to estimate the radiation dose received by the Silicon detector during normal running conditions of the TeVatron accelerator.

Perfluoroalkylated substances in food matrices: development of mass spectrometry based analytical methods and preliminary monitoring

Perfluoroalkylated substances are a group of chemicals that have been largely employed during the last 60 years in several applications, widely spreading and accumulating in the environment due to their extreme resistance to degradation. As a consequence, they have been found also in various types of food as well as in drinking water, proving that they can easily reach humans through the diet. The available information concerning their adverse effects on health has recently increased the interest towards these contaminants and highlighted the importance of investigating all the potential sources of human exposure, among which diet was proved to be the most relevant. This need has been underlined by the European Union through Recommendation 2010/161/EU: in this document, Member States were called to monitor their presence of in food, producing accurate estimations of human exposure. The purpose of the research presented in this thesis, which is the result of a partnership between an Italian and a French laboratory, was to develop reliable tools for the analysis of these pollutants in food, to be used for generating data on potentially contaminated matrices. An efficient method based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for the detection of 16 different perfluorinated compounds in milk has been validated in accordance with current European regulation guidelines (2002/657/EC) and is currently under evaluation for ISO 17025 accreditation. The proposed technique was applied to cow, powder and human breast milk samples from Italy and France to produce a preliminary monitoring on the presence of these contaminants. In accordance with the above mentioned European Recommendation, this project led also to the development of a promising technique for the quantification of some precursors of these substances in fish. This method showed extremely satisfying performances in terms of linearity and limits of detection, and will be useful for future surveys.

Inductive-Capacitive Resonant Circuit Sensors for Structural Health and Environmental Monitoring

Inductive-capacitive (LC) resonant circuit sensors are low-cost, wireless, durable, simple to fabricate and battery-less. Consequently, they are well suited to sensing applications in harsh environments or in situations where large numbers of sensors are needed. They are also advantageous in applications where access to the sensor is limited or impossible or when sensors are needed on a disposable basis. Due to their many advantages, LC sensors have been used for sensing a variety of parameters including humidity, temperature, chemical concentrations, pH, stress/pressure, strain, food quality and even biological growth. However, current versions of the LC sensor technology are limited to sensing only one parameter. The purpose of this work is to develop new types of LC sensor systems that are simpler to fabricate (hence lower cost) or capable of monitoring multiple parameters simultaneously. One design presented in this work, referred to as the multi-element LC sensor, is able to measure multiple parameters simultaneously using a second capacitive element. Compared to conventional LC sensors, this design can sense multiple parameters with a higher detection range than two independent sensors while maintaining the same overall sensor footprint. In addition, the two-element sensor does not suffer from interference issues normally encountered while implementing two LC sensors in close proximity. Another design, the single-spiral inductive-capacitive sensor, utilizes the parasitic capacitance of a coil or spring structure to form a single layer LC resonant circuit. Unlike conventional LC sensors, this design is truly planar, thus simplifying its fabrication process and reducing sensor cost. Due to the simplicity of this sensor layout it will be easier and more cost-effective for embedding in common building or packaging materials during manufacturing processes, thereby adding functionality to current products (such as drywall sheets) while having a minor impact on overall unit cost. These modifications to the LC sensor design significantly improve the functionality and commercial feasibility of this technology, especially for applications where a large array of sensors or multiple sensing parameters are required.