When are battery electric vehicles economically convenient? A sensitivity analysis based on multi-carrier residential energy system renovation modelling

Investing in low-carbon technologies, including light-duty vehicles, is a strategy to decarbonize the residential sector and private mobility. This work aims to assess the parameters driving the economic convenience of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) for a household, and what are the economic implications of BEV adoption on the total cost of...

Can designers take the driver’s seat? A new human-centered process to design with data and machine learning

Machine Learning (ML) is increasingly becoming a crucial asset across diverse industries. However, designers lack human-centered processes to envision and develop innovative solutions enabled by ML. By engaging in a Research-through-Design activity, we outline a new design process to generate human-centered adaptive systems enabled by data and...

Ambiguity for Social Self-tracking Practices: Exploring an Emerging Design Space

Ambiguity is gaining attention in self-tracking research as a means to go beyond the mere quantification of body signals. Recent research has suggested that ambiguity can be used even to enable social connection mediated by personal data. To explore this design space more widely, we organized two design workshops with a total of 67...

Design for Emergency: How Digital Technologies Enabled an Open Design Platform to Respond to COVID-19

In the COVID-19 pandemic, digital technologies (DT) supported the design and implementation of solutions addressing new needs and living conditions. We describe Design for Emergency, a digital open design platform developed to ideate solutions for people's fast-changing needs in the pandemic, to analyze how DT can affect human-centered design...

Experimental, numerical and analytical investigations of masonry corners: Influence of the horizontal pseudo-static load orientation

The present work aims to expand the knowledge of the behaviour of masonry corners, which are capital to obtain an integral seismic response in masonry buildings. In particular, the influence of the seismic load orientation (from π/4 to π/2) is investigated experimentally, numerically and analytically. Both units and interfaces have been...

Impact of mass-scale deployment of electric vehicles and benefits of smart charging across all European countries

The mass-scale integration of electric vehicles into the power system is a key pillar of the European energy transition agenda. Yet, the extent to which such integration would represent a burden for the power system of each member country is still an unanswered question. This is mainly due to a lack of accurate and context-specific...

Failure characteristics of reinforced concrete circular slabs subsequently subjected to fire exposure and static load: An experimental study

This study investigated the effect of fire on the ultimate load-bearing capacity of reinforced concrete (RC) slabs. The structural response of RC circular specimens subjected to static load conditions after exposure to a hydrocarbon fire on one side of the specimen was examined. Two fire exposure times were considered (60 and 120 min) in...

Blockchain: What Does It Mean to Industrial Electronics?: Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities

Imagine you want to send money to a friend overseas. Wouldn't it be good if you didn't have to pay hefty fees to the intermediaries, and your friend received the funds very quickly? Now imagine ordering parts to make a product in your manufacturing plant. Wouldn't it be great if you were able to verify where each part comes from and have...

Weather-induced variability of country-scale space heating demand under different refurbishment scenarios for residential buildings

The decarbonisation of residential heat through integration with the power system and deployment of refurbishment policies is at the core of European energy policies. Yet, heat-electricity integration may be challenged, in practice, by the large variability of heat demand across weather years. Current approaches for residential heat demand...

Experimental investigation on the structural response of RC slabs subjected to combined fire and blast

Reinforced concrete (RC) submerged floating tunnels (SFTs) represent a possible solution for crossing wide, deep fjords, and is considered for the E39 highway route along the Norwegian west coast. With regard to SFTs, the specific accidental scenario that is under investigation is the combined action of fire and subsequent internal explosion,...

Material Characterization Approach for Modeling High-Strength Concrete after Cooling from Elevated Temperatures

Advanced numerical modeling of high-strength concrete (fc>60 MPa) structures designed to withstand severe thermal conditions requires detailed and reliable information on the mechanical properties of the material exposed to elevated temperatures. The only uniaxial compressive strength variation with temperature is not enough to satisfy the...

Transcriptomic analysis of two thioalkalivibriospecies under arsenite stress revealed a potential candidate gene for an alternative arsenite oxidation pathway

The genus Thioalkalivibrio includes haloalkaliphilic chemolithoautotrophic sulfur-oxidizing bacteria isolated from various soda lakes worldwide. Some of these lakes possess in addition to their extreme haloalkaline environment also other harsh conditions, to which Thioalkalivibrio needs to adapt. An example is arsenic in soda lakes in eastern...

StimTrack: An open-source software for manual transcranial magnetic stimulation coil positioning

Background During Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) experiments researchers often use a neuronavigation system to precisely and accurately maintain coil position and orientation. New method This study aimed to develop and validate an open-source software for TMS coil navigation. StimTrack uses an optical tracker and an intuitive user...

Intra and inter-session reliability of rapid Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation stimulus-response curves of tibialis anterior muscle in healthy older adults

Objective: The clinical use of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) as a technique to assess corticospinal excitability is limited by the time for data acquisition and the measurement variability. This study aimed at evaluating the reliability of Stimulus-Response (SR) curves acquired with a recently proposed rapid protocol on tibialis...

Numerical study for accidental gas releases from high pressure pipelines

This work concerns the analysis of consequences of gas releases from high pressure pipelines due to accidental events. This analysis has been performed using the CFD code Fluent. The first step of the work intended to evaluate the capability of Fluent to adequately simulate a supersonic underexpanded free jet. This validation has been based on...