The purpose of this work is to analyze and to quantify the contributions of measurement uncertainty in the human exposure to vibrations. Typically, the high-level vibrations exposure in workplace can cause the onset of pathologies affecting musculoskeletal, vascular and neurological systems. Regulations and Standards lay down the assessment of the health risks arising from vibrations by using specific instruments and a proper measurement procedure. This paper proposes a methodology for the uncertainty evaluation of exposure to hand-arm and whole-body vibrations; as a main contribution, the uncertainty analysis of daily exposure hand-arm vibrations and whole-body vibrations is provided in order to estimate the exposition vibrations and to reduce the risks of the worker. This activity was developed in collaboration with Military Navy Arsenal in Taranto (South Italy), which is active all along in the protection of health and the safety in the workplace

The purpose of this work is twofold: first to investigate the accuracy of Photo-Voltaic (PV) modeling under non-standard test conditions (STCs), and then to estimate the inaccuracies on maximum power prediction for different PV technologies; this is achieved through the comparison between predicted and measured data under a variety of operating conditions. The developed technique is based on the identification of the modules parameters of the double-diode equivalent circuit. The model has been validated by experimental data taken on five different ?2 kWp plants of the PV LABoratory (PV-LAB), with different interconnection schemes, and it predicts the power production for mono and poly crystalline Silicon (m-Si and p-Si) plants, while the prediction for CIGS and CdTe PV plants appears less accurate. Results of this comparison are then used to analyze the impact of prediction inaccuracy under real operating conditions

The purpose of this work is to evaluate how the choice of mother wavelet function affects ultrasound image denoising. The paper presents a detailed analysis of the properties of each wavelet family highlighting their properties and limitations in ultrasound image filtering applications. The study has been carried out using controlled noise-variance ultrasound images simulated by Field II program in order to compare the effectiveness of filtering. Medical image quality for each wavelet function has been evaluated using two different metrics: the classical peak signal-to-noise ratio and the edges preservation in the filtered image. Significant remarks have been found out from the analysis providing valuable information to obtain best image for ultrasound exams. Finally real high-quality ultrasound images have been processed by the proposed method to validate obtained results.

The shore-side electrical power supply to a ship at berth (also known as Cold Ironing –CI) is an important issue to obtain the reduction of ship emissions and to make ports more environmental-friendly. Due to European Commission recommendations the principal European ports are planning to install this technology, especially for harbour areas with high pollution levels. In this context, the municipality of Taranto (Italy) is focusing its attention on new actions aimed at the environmental requalification of port area based on cold ironing. In this paper, the authors gather and analyze the data associated with the berthing operations and resulting emissions to better define suitable actions for emissions reduction and to suggest some possible strategies for bringing down pollutants, in order to reach a wealth based on environmental preservation.

Coastal erosion is a natural phenomenon affecting a growing number of worldwide sites. The impact of the waves on coast is cause of debris removal and soil erosion. The effect depends on wave strength, action time, and wave direction. In literature, several models have been proposed to estimate the mean rate of sediments moved annually alongshore. In the manuscript, the authors propose a prediction model to estimate the evolution of shoreline due to coastal erosion. Three altimeters are used to measure the instantaneous sea surface elevation.Directional wave spectrum is computed in order to estimate the direction of wave propagation and its measurement uncertainty. The shoreline is discretised into a finite number of linear segments. Then, according to historical information on the shoreline transformation, the impact of the wave on the coast is evaluated. Subsequently, the model predicts the changes of each line segment estimating the future shoreline.

This paper presents a novel parametric thresholding procedure to reduce the effect of speckle noise in ultrasound (US) medical images. The method comprises the use of an adaptive data-driven exponential operator that operates on wavelet coefficients of the US image to suppress undesired effects of disturbances, preserving signal details. The obtained results demonstrate that the proposed denoising method increases the medical image quality and, therefore, it can be a useful tool in medical diagnosis.

Recently, many complex medical exams require correlating the information from magnetic resonance (MR) and computed tomography (CT) images in order to obtain a more accurate diagnostics. This is rather complex when the images under test have very different noise level. In this paper, a technique to compare the quality of the CT and MR images is introduced. The proposed technique is useful to assess the effect of different noise distribution on medical images and to equalize the examinations produced by different imagining technologies in terms of clearness of images and sharpness of contours. The authors, after examining the statistical properties of the noise affecting CT and MR images, analyze its effect on final image quality. Then, a methodology to compare the mean square errors relevant to CT and MR images is proposed. The study was carried out using 148 images obtained from patients under neuropsychological test. The experimental tests have been performed by corrupting the original data with different noise levels.

The main purpose of this work is the assessment of quality performance of medical imaging systems by using objective image quality tests. To this aim, the influence of radiographic parameters has been investigated in order to reduce radiation dose to patients by assuring a good quality of the images.

The paper presents a novel denoising method for ultrasound medical images, whose quality is degraded by the peculiar phenomenon of speckle noise. The method is constructed step-by-step on the basis of recent research on the topic, and consists in Gaussian filtering of proper wavelet coefficients of the image, corresponding to vertical and diagonal details. A comparison with other filtering techniques for ultrasound imaging, i.e. Wiener and median filter, is presented. The obtained results, combined with those reported in independent research, demonstrate that the proposed denoising scheme has very good performance and is very promising for actual medical application.

In this paper a hybrid solar system made with photovoltaic cells and thermoelectric modules has been analyzed. The theoretical energy conversion and the performance parameters have been investigated and compared with respect to design and geographic location using a simulated model. In particular, the effects of the global radiance, of the ambient temperature and of the hours of sunshine on the power and energy production are assessed. The obtained results show that the advantages of the thermoelectric modules use are less significant when the locations considered are very distant from the equator.

BiomedicalKeywords—Biomedical x-ray imaging, image quality, phantom, image contrast, radioation dose.

Il costante sviluppo del turismo e delle attività industriali, pone una pressione sempre crescente sull’ambiente, alterandone gli equilibri e costituendo un rischio per la salute umana. Tra le principali cause di natura antropica vi sono le acque di scarico e i fertilizzanti agricoli che, riversandosi in mare, apportano sostanze in grado di promuovere o limitare la proliferazione di micro alghe (fitoplancton), organismi alla base dell’ecosistema marino e della catena alimentare. Tuttavia, nella pratica comune, la concentrazione di micro alghe in mare non viene misurata direttamente ma è piuttosto la concentrazione di clorofilla-a in esse contenuta (in mg/m3) ad essere riconosciuta nell’ordinamento vigente come unico parametro biologico per la determinazione della classe di benessere di appartenenza di un corpo idrico.

The first fundamental step within a research project aiming at the 3D reconstruction and rendering of the accident scenes involving motor vehicles is accounted for. More specifically, the paper deals with the problem of accurately locating and georeferencing both the considered scenario and all involved elements (such as cars, debris, peeling out and so on) of interest for Road Safety experts. A new method, based on Kalman filtering, is presented for enhancing the preliminary estimates, obtained through low-cost GPS devices, of the position of proper scene markers. To this aim, the distances between the markers is measured through a low-accuracy device (as an example, an ultrawideband radar) and the achieved results are used as feedback to improve the estimate of markers positions. Preliminary results, obtained in numerical tests, are presented to prove the feasibility of the method, thus suggesting its implementation in an actual measurement station.