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World imports of Italian sparkling wines fell by 9% in value and 5% in quantities. In view of this, the quality characterisation of these products is desirable to increase their market value and restore their global visibility.

For this purpose, in this paper, heavy metals (Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Ga, Hf, Hg, Mn, Mo, Nb, Ni, Pb, Re, Sb, Sn, Ta, Th, Tl, U, W, V, Zn, Zr), rare Earth elements (REEs) (Ce, Dy, Er, Eu, Gd, Ho, La, Lu, Nd, Pr, Sm, Tb, Tm, Yb) and isotopes ratio (208Pb/206Pb, 207Pb/206Pb, 206Pb/204Pb, 208Pb/207Pb, 87Sr/86Sr) were analysed in Italian sparkling wines with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) certification by High Resolution Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (HR-ICP-MS) and MultiCollector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (MC-ICP-MS). The samples were produced in the Veneto region, and they were compared to white and red wines from the same area.

Sparkling wines present a characteristic elemental pattern compared to white and red ones, with lower content of heavy metals and higher content in REEs. The ratio 87Sr/86Sr resulted in a powerful micro-scale geographical origins marker while Pb ratios as winemaking process one, both useful to prevent possible frauds. Multivariate data analyses, such as PCA and PLS-DA, were used to develop a model of recognition of Venetian sparkling wines.

The good classification of sparkling wines was achieved (95%), proving the suitable use of these analytes as markers for recognising sparkling wines and their geographical origin verification. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study investigating heavy metals, REEs and isotopes in Venetian sparkling wine for their recognition.

The article discusses mineral bioavailability and the process of absorption in humans. It explains the necessity for obtaining accurate data from human studies in order to make dietary intake recommendations for specific population groups. The importance of iron, selenium and copper is discussed, together with methods for determining absorption. In particular, the use of stable and radioisotope methodologies is discussed.

In this work we will discuss the suitability of carbon isotope analysis in plants for the assessment of environmental changes and their effects on crops and natural systems. For C₃ species, carbon isotope composition (δ¹³C) of plant tissues constitutes an integrated record of the miscellaneous climatic and physiological factors that affect carbon assimilation and/or stomatal conductance. Here we present a literature review on the relationship between different environmental parameters and δ¹³C in both herbaceous plants and trees, including some examples and case studies. We will also consider the applicability of some of these relationships in palaeoecological studies, as well as for the assessment of climate change dynamics and its implications. Major advantages and limitations of this technique are further discussed.

A regular crystal structure in which the lattice sites are occupied by the various isotopes of the same chemical element has enormous potential for the storage of information. Based on this idea, a model of an alternative genetic code is discussed in which elementary codons are represented by the various spatial combinations of different isotopes. In crystals with relatively large unit cell (e.g. boron) a single unit cell may play a role of an elementary isotopic codon. Some mechanisms of information transfer in such “isotopic biology” may involve localized electronic and vibrational states as well as isotopic variations of the diffusivity. Some possibilities of experimental testing of the proposed hypothesis are indicated.

ALTHOUGH the radioactive tracer technique has been known for many years, it is only recently that the production of a wide variety of artificially produced radioactive isotopes has opened up this field of research to all industries. Many firms may be prejudiced against adopting this new technique, because of possible dangers to personnel, lack of trained staff or an inadequate knowledge of the subject, but in many cases the advantages over ordinary methods are so great that it is worth while overcoming these prejudices.

A PROGRESSIVE increase in the standard of living is now widely accepted as both possible and desirable, even if the notion that it can be doubled within the next 25 years is dismissed as an optimistic flight of Butlerian fancy. The prerequisite is a substantial upsurge in the country's production. This was expressed succinctly by Mr. Victor Feather four years ago when, as Assistant Secretary to the Trades Union Congress, he told the Institute of Directors that ‘what can be done by any Government by way of social improvement depends on what Industry can produce and sell. About half the strikes that take place have nothing to do with hours or wages or conditions, but have a great deal to do with human relations. That field is one in which there must be patience, tolerance, concentration and great endeavour, but the rate of progress can and should be accelerated.’

The purpose of this work is to determine dependence of the separative power of the Iguassu gas centrifuge (GC) on the velocity of the rotor.

The dependence is determined by means of computer simulation of the gas flow in the GC and numerical solution of the diffusion equation for the light component of the binary mixture of uranium isotopes. 2D axisymmetric model with the sources/sinks of the mass, angular momentum and energy reproducing the scoops was explored for the computer simulation. Parameters of the model correspond to the parameters of the so-called Iguassu centrifuge. The separative power has been optimised in relation to the pressure of the gas, temperature of the gas, the temperature drop along the rotor, power of the source of angular momentum and energy, feed flow and geometry of the lower baffle.

In the result, the optimised separative power depends only on the velocity, length and diameter of the rotor. The dependence on the velocity is described by the power law function with the power law index 2.6 which demonstrate stronger dependence on the velocity than it follows from experimental data. However, the separative power obtained with limitation on the pressure growth with the velocity depends on the velocity on the power ∼ 2 which well agree with the experiments.

For the first time, the optimised separative power of the GCs have been calculated via numerical simulation of the gas flow and diffusion of the binary mixture of isotope.

The study proposed a human–robot interaction (HRI) framework to enable operators to communicate remotely with robots in a simple and intuitive way. The study focused on the situation when operators with no programming skills have to accomplish teleoperated tasks dealing with randomly localized different-sized objects in an unstructured environment. The purpose of this study is to reduce stress on operators, increase accuracy and reduce the time of task accomplishment. The special application of the proposed system is in the radioactive isotope production factories. The following approach combined the reactivity of the operator’s direct control with the powerful tools of vision-based object classification and localization.

Perceptive real-time gesture control predicated on a Kinect sensor is formulated by information fusion between human intuitiveness and an augmented reality-based vision algorithm. Objects are localized using a developed feature-based vision algorithm, where the homography is estimated and Perspective-n-Point problem is solved. The 3D object position and orientation are stored in the robot end-effector memory for the last mission adjusting and waiting for a gesture control signal to autonomously pick/place an object. Object classification process is done using a one-shot Siamese neural network (NN) to train a proposed deep NN; other well-known models are also used in a comparison. The system was contextualized in one of the nuclear industry applications: radioactive isotope production and its validation were performed through a user study where 10 participants of different backgrounds are involved.

The system was contextualized in one of the nuclear industry applications: radioactive isotope production and its validation were performed through a user study where 10 participants of different backgrounds are involved. The results revealed the effectiveness of the proposed teleoperation system and demonstrate its potential for use by robotics non-experienced users to effectively accomplish remote robot tasks.

The proposed system reduces risk and increases level of safety when applied in hazardous environment such as the nuclear one.

The contribution and uniqueness of the presented study are represented in the development of a well-integrated HRI system that can tackle the four aforementioned circumstances in an effective and user-friendly way. High operator–robot reactivity is kept by using the direct control method, while a lot of cognitive stress is removed using elective/flapped autonomous mode to manipulate randomly localized different configuration objects. This necessitates building an effective deep learning algorithm (in comparison to well-known methods) to recognize objects in different conditions: illumination levels, shadows and different postures.

The nuclear battery technology depends on the spontaneous decay of the atomic nuclei of radioactive isotopes to generate electricity. One of the merits of a nuclear battery is its high-energy density, which can be around ten times higher than that of hydrogen fuel cells and a thousand times more than that of an electrochemical battery. A nuclear battery has an extremely long life and low maintenance and running costs coupled with applications in remote and hostile environmental environments. The rise of silicon technology has intensified research activities in the area of nuclear batteries. The paper aims to present a general overview of a nuclear battery.

This paper presents a general overview of a nuclear battery and will significantly reduce reliance on non-renewable energy source. The requirement for long-lived power supplies have necessitated the pragmatic shift toward the realization of cleaner, safer and renewable energy sources.

Nuclear battery is a safe enabling technology for many applications including military and commercial applications. They have very long operating life under harsh environmental conditions. These cells demonstrate high potential for use in low power applications under a broad range of temperatures.

The nuclear battery technology has been receiving considerable in-depth research for applications that require long-life power sources.