Showing papers by "University of Udine published in 1986"

The energy cost of human locomotion on land and in water.

Abstract: The energy cost of the forms of locomotion discussed throughout this article is summarized in Table 9. This table, as well as the preceding sections of this article, are designed to provide a rather comprehensive and simple set of information for potential readers: medical doctors, who should be able to prescribe to their patients (obese, hypertensive, cardiac, etc.) the correct amount and type of exercise, thus making use of exercise as of any other drug, of which it is imperative to know posology and contraindications; athletes, trainers, and sportsmen in general, who should gear correctly their diet to the type and amount of physical exercise; physical educators, who should be aware of the specific characteristics of the exercise modes they propose to their pupils, as a function of their sex, age, and athletic capacity. However, besides these practical applications, the notions discussed throughout this article bear also a more general interest. Indeed, they allow a better understanding of the motion of man, that is, of the only machine, which besides moving about, also tries to understand how he does it.

Nonlinear Stochastic Homogenization

Abstract: In questo lavoro viene studiata l'omogeneizzazione stocastica per funzionali integrali del Calcolo delle Variazioni con integrando dipendente dalla variabile spaziale e convesso nel gradiente, soddisfacente alle usuali ipotesi di uniforme coercitivita e limitatezza. Il risultato generale ottenuto copre un largo spettro di fenomeni riguardanti materiali con disposizione casuale di piu componenti il cui comportamento fisico e retto da equasioni variazionali non lineari.

The Volatile Fraction of Chestnut Honey

Abstract: SummaryThe volatile components of a unifloral chestnut (Castanea sativa) honey were isolated by steam distillation/extraction and studied using a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer equipped with a computerized system for data acquisition and library search The extract of volatiles was a complex mixture of at least 50 compounds, 19 of which had not been previously reported to be present in honey Some compounds, and particularly the main component of the mixture (3-aminoacetophenone), may be specific for the floral source

Salicylate-collapsed membrane potential in pea stem mitochondria

Abstract: Salicylate, acetylsalicylate, benzoate and 3,5-diiodosalicylate were examined for their effects on pea (Pisum sativum L. cv. Alaska) stem mitochondria and on a tonoplast-enriched fraction. Salicylate collapsed the transmembrane electrochemical potential of mitochondria and the ATP-dependent proton gradient of the tonoplast-enriched vesicle preparation. Benzoate and acetylsalicylate did not show any effect, while 3,5-diiodosalicylate inhibited both basal O2 consumption and ATPase activity of pea mitochondria. Salicylate seems to act as a protonophore. However, its effect is evident only at concentrations higher than those required by classical protonophores and, in addition, can be abolished after removing salicylate from the incubation medium. The activity of salicylate appears linked to the presence of the free phenolic hydroxyl on the benzene ring.

Investigation of Temperature Fields Around Embedded Cryoprobes

Abstract: The temperature fields around cryoprobes were investigated analytically and experimentally. Two cryoprobes were employed: a spherically shaped general purpose probe utilizing liquid nitrogen and a cylindrical “glaucoma” probe utilizing the Joule-Thomson effect in gaseous CO2 . Both probes were operated by commercial cryostats. The analytical solutions included a one-dimensional integral solution for the general purpose cryoprobe, and finite element solutions for both cryoprobes. Both solutions were based on the enthalpy method. Analytical and experimental results compared reasonably well. Deviations of these results are believed to be due, mainly, to the incomplete specification of the boundary conditions on the surface of the cryoprobe.

Evaluation of organic matter stabilization in sewage sludge

Abstract: The ratio between non‐humified and humified fractions in pyrophosphate extracts is shown to vary during maturation of sewage sludge. The ratio is higher than 1 in the raw materials but lowers at 1 or less than 1 with the aging of sludge and is assumed to reflect quantitatively the degree of stabilization of organic matter in the sludge. Analytical isoelectrofocusing (IEF) experiments showed that humified fractions in raw sludge focalize only in the pH gradient regions lower than 5.0, whilst in older sludge samples a progressive strengthening of bands occurs in the region between pH 6.5 and 5.0, approaching at least partially IEF patterns of soil organic matter. IEF patterns are suggested to reflect the stabilization of organic matter in sewage sludge from a qualitative point of view.

Convergence of the approximate free boundary for the multidimensional one-phase Stefan problem

Abstract: The variational inequality arising from the one-phase multidimensional Stefan problem is discretized by piecewise-linear finite elements in space and by backward-differences in time. Error estimates for the discrete free boundary at each time-step are proved.

Tailoring importance evaluation to reader's goals: a contribution to descriptive text summarization

Abstract: The paper deals with a new approach to importance evaluation of descriptive texts developed in the framework of SUSY, an experimental system in the domain of text summarization. The problem of taking into account the reader's goals in evaluating importance of different parts of a text is first analyzed. A solution to the design of a goal interpreter capable of computing a quantitative measure of the relevance degree of a piece of text according to a given goal is then proposed, and an example of goal interpreter operation is provided.

An intelligent interface for accessing a technical data base

Abstract: The paper deals with the design of an intelligent interface aimed at assisting end-users in accessing a large and complex technical data base (namely, the European Reliability Data System - ERDS) in a friendly, correct, and effective way. The interface includes both natural language understanding and expert problem solving capabilities and features a modular architecture devoted to cope with the exigencies of both technical and non-technical users. In the paper a brief introduction to ERDS is first presented and the problems related to its use are analysed. The requirements of the users of ERDS are then investigated, and the basic architecture of an intelligent interface is illustrated. The design criteria of the two main modules of the interface, namely the natural language query interface and the expert interface, are later discussed. At last, the present state of the project is reported and promising directions for future research are outlined.

Horn: an Inference Engine Prototype to Implement Intelligent Systems

Abstract: The main objective of this paper is to present a prototype implementation of the kernel of an inference engine whose behaviour could be driven both by the search space strategy stored in the knowledge base and the base beliefs on which the inference engine is applied. To this aim, a modal logic language is introduced as a deductive model of knowledge and belief and some properties are derived to be used as an abstract view of the inference engine.