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(1) Background: The objective of this study was to develop the field of mechanisms that generate aesthetic curves, as they can be useful in designing machines for the manufacture of highly beautiful products. We started from the image of the Flower of Life and we set out to build mechanisms in the field of mechanical engineering that can generate this image. (2) Methods: First, we studied in detail the geometry of the figure. Secondly, based on the mathematical considerations, we made the synthesis of a mechanism able to trace this image, based on the Geneva mechanism with intermittent movement. We completed this mechanism with other kinematic chains, so we generated the proposed curve. Next, we made the synthesis of the second generating mechanism. This was a gear mechanism with compound profiles to which we added additional kinematic chains to generate the Flower of Life curve. Further on, kinematics was applied to confirm the drawing of the curves with the closed loop method. (3) Results: The results obtained following the study and presented in the paper show that the two created mechanisms generate images (trajectories) identical to the Flower of Life. Moreover, other images similar to the Flower of Life, with great artistic potential, were obtained. (4) Conclusions: The aim of the study was achieved, the authors proposed two new mechanisms which generate a highly aesthetic design image—the "Flower of Life". The paper provides all the notions of structure and kinematics that are necessary to calculate the mechanisms and also analyzes other kinematic possibilities of the created mechanisms. The paper contributes to the development of a new field in the Theory of Mechanisms: generating aesthetic curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pin-in-the-slot joint is a common element in machines, and the dynamics of joints with clearances is an actively investigated topic. Important applications of such a joint can be found in Geneva mechanisms, robotized gear selectors, centrifugal vibration absorbers (CPVA) and other important mechanical devices. The paper will review the main analytical steps required to obtain the equations characterizing the different force contact models. Furthermore, a numerical test bench where such models are introduced for modeling the clearances between the pin and slot is proposed. In this regard, the present study will offer a comparison and discussion of the numerical results obtained with the different force contact models herein reviewed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: Software for the purposes of determination of solar potential of rooftops. In the context of encouraging the development of renewable energy, this paper deals with the description of a software solution for mapping out solar potential in a large scale and in high resolution. We leverage the performance provided by Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to accelerate shadow casting procedures (used both for direct sunlight exposure and the sky view factor), as well as use off-the-shelf components to compute an average weather pattern for a given area. Application of the approach is presented in the context of the solar cadaster of Greater Geneva (2000 km2). The results show that doing the analysis on a square tile of 3.4 km at a resolution of 0.5 m takes up to two hours, which is better than what we were achieving with the previous work. This shows that GPU-based calculations are highly competitive in the field of solar potential modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aiming at the problems of heavy workload of medical staff in the process of venous thrombosis prevention and treatment, error evaluation, missed evaluation, and inconsistent evaluation, we propose a joint extraction model of Chinese electronic medical records based on deep learning. The approach was to first construct the handshake annotation, then use bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) as the word vector embedding, then use the bidirectional long short-term memory network (BiLSTM) to extract the contextual features, and then integrate the contextual information into the process of normalizing the word vector. Experiments show that our proposed method achieves 93.3% and 94.3% of entity and relation F1 on the constructed electronic medical record dataset, which effectively improves the effect of medical information extraction. At the same time, the venous thromboembolism (VTE) risk factors extracted from the electronic medical record were used to judge the risk factors of venous thrombosis by means of rule reasoning. Compared with the assessment of clinicians on the Wells and Geneva scales, the accuracy rates of 84.7% and 86.1% were obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to shed light on the history of the Reformation in 17th-century Geneva. The lens through which this study is conducted is that of religious publishing activity, which was significantly managed by the Company of Pastors and Professors. The role of the Company in religious publishing is inextricably linked to the unique status of the Church of Geneva within the broader context of the Reformation. The Company's institutional archives offer insight into the issues at stake in the printed book matters. This article focuses on the role of the Company in local censorship, which diminished over the period under study. The Company's censorship function enabled it to exert concrete influence on the global scale of Reformed publishing. This influence was the consequence of the Company's ecclesiastical and theological authority. This authority derived from the status of the Church of Geneva as the principal church and birthplace of the Reformation in the 16th century. An analysis of the metaphors signifying and symbolizing this role in the printed books themselves underlines the pre-eminence of the Church of Geneva in 17th-century Reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is of great significance to the improvement of industrial efficiency and quality, and to reduce industrial costs and resources. However, there are few openly-reported practical project applications based on the IIoT up to now. For legacy automation devices in traditional industry, it is especially challenging to realize the upgrading of industrial automation adopting the IIoT technology with less investment. Based on the practical engineering experience, this paper introduces the automation renovation of a sewage treatment plant. The legacy automation devices are upgraded by the central controller of a STM32 processor (Produced by STMicroelectronics company, located in Geneva, Switzerland), and the WeChatApplet (Developed by Tencent company, located in Shenzhen, China) is used as the extended host computer. A set of remote monitoring and control systems of sewage treatment based on the IIoT is built to realize the wide-area monitoring and control of sewage treatment. The paper describes the field hardware system, wide-area monitoring and control application program, management cloud platform and security technologies in detail. The actual operation results show that the monitoring system has the requirements of high accuracy, good real-time performance, reliable operation and low cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To conveniently implement the online detection of grain moisture in combined harvesters and the address the influence of the no-load measurement baseline, thereby enhancing detection accuracy and measurement continuity, this study developed a differential grain moisture detection device. For its convenient installation and integration on combined harvesters, a single-pole plate measurement element with a 1.6 mm thick epoxy resin coated with a 2-ounce copper film was designed, and a grain moisture detection device was constructed based on the STM32F103 microprocessor (STMicroelectronics International NV, Geneva, Switzerland). To enhance the device's interference resistance, a differential amplification measurement circuit integrated with high-frequency excitation was designed using a reference capacitance. To improve the resolution of the measurement circuit, Malab simulations were conducted at different excitation frequencies, ultimately selecting 30 kHz as the system's excitation signal frequency. To validate the effectiveness of the measurement circuit, validity tests were performed on the constructed sensor, which showed that the sensor's measurement voltage could effectively distinguish the moisture levels in grains, with a determination coefficient (R²) reaching 0.9978. To address the errors in moisture measurement caused by changes in grain temperature, an interaction experiment of the effect of moisture content and temperature on the measurement voltage was conducted using an integrated temperature sensor, resulting in the construction of a moisture content calculation model. Both the indoor static detection and field testing of the moisture detection device were conducted, indicating that the maximum average error in static measurements was 0.3%, with a maximum relative error of 0.47%, and the average relative error in field tests was ≤0.4%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A healthy 47-year-old woman consulted the Oral Surgery and Implantology Unit of the University Hospitals of Geneva with a request to treat her painful tooth 11 and replace the missing tooth 21. The dental history revealed that the patient had lost teeth 21 and 22 due to advanced caries. On clinical examination, tooth 11 showed an ill-fitting prosthetic crown with overhanging margins, an increased localized probing depth of 8 mm in the disto-vestibular area, and sensitivity to percussion. The edentulous site 21 showed horizontal bone atrophy. Radiological examination revealed a well-defined unilocular radiotransparent lesion surrounded by a thin radiolucent border, located at the apex of tooth 11 and measuring 10 × 8 mm. The treatment consisted of extraction of 11, enucleation of the apical lesion, and insertion of implants at sites 11 and 21 with simultaneous bone augmentation in a single surgical procedure, with aesthetic and functional results at 3-year follow-up without any complications. Our case highlights that immediate implant placement in cases of cystic periapical lesions represents a good valid alternative to standard treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of plant cultivar on the degree of mycorrhization and the benefits mediated by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) have been documented in many crops. In apple, a wide variety of rootstocks are commercially available; however, it is not clear whether some rootstock genotypes are more susceptible to mycorrhization than others and/or whether AMF species identity influences rootstock compatibility. This study addresses these questions by directly testing the ability/efficacy of four different AMF species (Rhizophagus irregularis, Septoglomus deserticola, Claroideoglomus claroideum or Claroideoglomus etunicatum) to colonize a variety of commercially available Geneva apple rootstock genotypes (G.11, G.41, G.210, G.969, and G.890). Briefly, micropropagated plantlets were inoculated with individual species of AMF or were not inoculated. The effects of the rootstock genotype/AMF interaction on mycorrhization, plant growth, and/or leaf nutrient concentrations were assessed. We found that both rootstock genotype and the identity of the AMF are significant sources of variation affecting the percentage of colonization. However, these factors largely operate independently in terms of the extent of root colonization. Among the AMF tested, C. etunicatum and R. irregularis represented the most compatible fungal partners, regardless of apple rootstock genotype. Among the rootstocks tested, semi-dwarfing rootstocks appeared to have an advantage over dwarfing rootstocks in regard to establishing and maintaining associations with AMF. Nutrient uptake and plant growth outcomes were also influenced in a rootstock genotype/AMF species-specific manner. Our findings suggest that matching host genetics with compatible AMF species has the potential to enhance agricultural practices in nursery and orchard systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report the case of a 61-year-old woman who was referred to the Oral Surgery and Implantology Unit of the University Hospitals of Geneva to take care of edentulous sites after the dental avulsions of teeth 11 and 21 following traumatic shock due to endotracheal intubation under general anesthesia. The dental history revealed that the patient had a history of generalized chronic periodontitis that had been treated several years earlier. The treatment consisted, for the first time to our knowledge, of the immediate insertion of implants at sites 11 and 21 with simultaneous bone augmentation in a single surgical procedure and immediate restorations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater dynamic monitoring of assessment points and evaluation areas has a significant predictive effect for controlling the occurrence of disasters. Obtaining water level and water temperature change data can provide important theoretical significance and reference values. However, in some remote areas of China, the measurement data concerning water level change are mostly obtained by manual measurement. This measurement method not only wastes manpower, but also cannot ensure the accuracy and real-time nature of the data. Therefore, this paper carried out research and design on a fluviograph, based on the relationship between hydraulic pressure and water depth. In the paper, the fluviograph used ultra-small pressure sensors to complete the data acquisition of the water level, a STM32L011 single-chip microcomputer (STMicroelectronics, Geneva, Switzerland) to process the data, and LabVIEW software to display the final data. Additionally, the water level data record and water temperature information record can be fed back to the user and the manager. After laboratory testing, the water level variation error range of this fluviograph was 1–2 cm, and the water temperature error range was less than 1 °C, which indicates the accuracy of the metrical data. The results show that the fluviograph realizes the function of automatically recording the water level and water temperature of the monitoring point, and it improves the social production efficiency greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to report a case of idiopathic osteosclerosis of the mandible and to discuss the differential diagnosis of this lesion. A 17-year-old female was referred to the University Hospital of Geneva by her orthodontist following the fortuitous finding of a radio-opaque lesion in the right posterior mandible at the apex of tooth 44. Intraoral clinical examination revealed no abnormalities of the oral mucosa. Tooth 44 was asymptomatic and reacted positively to the sensitivity test. The orthopantomogram revealed a well-defined unilocular radiodense lesion, surrounded by a thin radiolucent border, measuring 10 × 33 mm, located in the IV quadrant, related to the apex of tooth 44. Differential diagnoses mainly included cementoblastoma, focal cemento-osseous dysplasia, ossifying fibroma, condensing osteitis and idiopathic osteosclerosis. The biopsy material allowed a diagnosis of idiopathic osteosclerosis. The proposed treatment was therefore a "wait and see" approach. After 2 years of follow-up, the patient was asymptomatic, and healing was complete without any neurosensory complications. Our case underlines the differential diagnosis complexity of radio-opaque lesions associated with teeth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Smart grids play an important role for energy management by directly supporting the socio-ecological transition of neighbourhoods. This research provides the design of a coordination model to enable the management and exchange of electrical energy between producers and consumers at a micro-grid level. This model, which derives from the SAPERE coordination model, allows the intelligent digital twins to interact and generate services on the fly to meet different needs in real time. We have designed producer and consumer digital twins, which autonomously generate supply contracts in the form of a transaction, and supervisor digital twins, which regulate energy at the node level, managing threshold violations and proactively avoiding future threshold violations by using predictions. This coordination model allows energy exchanges in a single node and in a micro-grid structure that contains several neighbouring nodes. We have implemented and tested the platform with realistic data, based on the consumption statistics of a real household, and with real data, collected in the living-lab of "Les Vergers" located near Geneva. The results show that the combination of a coordination model and intelligent digital twins actually supports self-adaptive energy management in a smart grid. Such approaches are fundamental to develop efficient and reliable smart grids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Facing the decline of biodiversity worldwide, the conservation of the remaining natural and semi-natural areas is fundamental. To do so, the concept of green infrastructure has gained attention recently. This case study presents the method developed to identify the green infrastructure in a cross-border, urbanized territory between Switzerland and France in the area of influence of the city of Geneva. The first part of the methodology consists of calculating and mapping the inputs aggregated in four pillars: (i) the distribution of habitats as well as the predicted distribution of hundreds of plant and animal species, (ii) the supply of five ecosystem services, (iii) the functional connectivity for three animal species and the light pollution and (iv) five indices of landscape's structure. These inputs are then used to run a prioritization model to identify the areas with the highest ecological interest according to these weighted inputs. The cross-border situation of this case study had impacts on the way the input data were gathered and weighted and on the way the output was created to consider the expectations of the three main local authorities involved, without creating any legal obligations on the implementation of the green infrastructure. As a positive sign of the usefulness of these results, the resulting maps were immediately transferred to the land use planners in charge of developing ambitious visions of the "Grand Genève" territory for 2050 in alignment with 10 objectives of ecological transition as recently agreed and signed by local authorities. The method presented in this article is flexible and includes a broad description of biodiversity, supporting a reliable network of areas with high ecological values for conservation purposes and human well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Swiss Vocational Education and Training (VET) is based on national legislation which was introduced in the 1930s and renewed in the 1960s (as well as in the 1970s and in 2002). At first, the goal of the national VET legislation was to further Vocational Education and Training in order to support small and medium enterprises; however, later, it also included industry and services and has more recently grown to support the learners themselves. The 1963 national legislation and the following implementation acts in the cantons were decisive in shaping the Swiss VET system from a historical and comparative perspective. We argue that still today we do not have a unified, national system of education, but rather e cantonal modes of education and also of VET. However, the cantonal actors—with a specific focus on Ticino, Geneva, and Zurich—argue with similar justifications, when it comes to the reform of VET. Nevertheless, within this national legal framework, the cantons adopt rather different solutions. The result is that different (language specific) regional pathways of VET were established, based on various education and training regimes. In this research paper, we aim to concentrate on the years from 1950 to 1970, a period that turns out to be particularly significant for the development of Swiss VET. We focus our research on the introduction of the Vocational Training Act in 1963 and look in detail at the extent to which the cantons developed their corresponding implementation acts from the perspectives of different motives and logics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We aim to combine asteroseismology, spectroscopy, and evolutionary models to establish a comprehensive picture of the evolution of Galactic blue supergiant stars (BSG). To start such an investigation, we selected three BSG candidates for our analysis: HD 42087 (PU Gem), HD 52089 (ϵ CMa), and HD 58350 (η CMa). These stars show pulsations and were suspected to be in an evolutionary stage either preceding or succeding the red supergiant (RSG) stage. For our analysis, we utilized the 2-min cadence TESS data to study the photometric variability, and we obtained new spectroscopic observations at the CASLEO observatory. We used non-LTE radiative transfer models calculated with CMFGEN to derive their stellar and wind parameters. For the fitting procedure, we included CMFGEN models in the iterative spectral analysis pipeline XTgrid to determine their CNO abundances. The spectral modeling was limited to changing only the effective temperature, surface gravity, CNO abundances, and mass-loss rates. Finally, we compared the derived metal abundances with prediction from Geneva stellar evolution models. The frequency spectra of all three stars show stochastic oscillations and indications of one nonradial strange mode, f r = 0.09321 d − 1 in HD 42087 and a rotational splitting centred in f 2 = 0.36366 d − 1 in HD 52089. We conclude that the rather short sectoral observing windows of TESS prevent establishing a reliable mode identification of low frequencies connected to mass-loss variabilities. The spectral analysis confirmed gradual changes in the mass-loss rates, and the derived CNO abundances comply with the values reported in the literature. We were able to achieve a quantitative match with stellar evolution models for the stellar masses and luminosities. However, the spectroscopic surface abundances turned out to be inconsistent with the theoretical predictions. The stars show N enrichment, typical for CNO cycle processed material, but the abundance ratios did not reflect the associated levels of C and O depletion. We found HD 42087 to be the most consistent with a pre-RSG evolutionary stage, HD 58350 is most likely in a post-RSG evolution and HD 52089 shows stellar parameters compatible with a star at the TAMS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we perform a literature review on the current state of knowledge about homeowners in the context of the adoption of renewable heating systems. Despite a considerable number of studies about homeowners, homeowner–installer interactions, and ways to improve the effectiveness of renewable heating programs, based on homeowner knowledge, have not yet been studied in much detail. To address these knowledge gaps, we conduct a qualitative study on single-family house owners who installed heat pumps and took part in a renewable heating program in Geneva, Switzerland. We cover homeowner practices in choosing installers and heating system types, homeowners' feedback about heat pump installation and use, as well as their experience in participation in the renewable heating program. Based on the literature review and the findings from the interviews, we provide the following recommendations on how to increase the effectiveness of renewable heating programs: (a) support for homeowners should not be limited to financial incentives; (b) partnership programs with installers could help to increase the quality of installation services and enable homeowners to choose qualified installers; and (c) assisting homeowners in pre-qualification and ex-post analysis, in learning how to operate their renewable heating systems and in solving problems during the post-installation period, can contribute to improved technology reputation, which can, in turn, increase technology uptake by other homeowners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to evaluate the success of procedural conscious sedation using inhaled equimolar nitrous oxide–oxygen (NOIS—EMONO) in patients undergoing routine dental and oral surgery procedures in a Swiss university hospital setting. Materials and methods: The authors conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients that underwent NOIS-supported procedures between 2018 and 2022 at the oral surgery department of the University Hospital of Geneva (HUG), Switzerland. The primary outcome was the measurement of the procedure's success and efficacy as defined by the European Society of Anesthesiology. Secondary objectives included the analysis of the types of treatments performed, their indications, patient behavior, and the patient–clinician satisfaction score. Results: 55 patients were included in the study; 85% underwent surgical procedures, and the remaining 15% underwent restorative and preventive procedures. The overall treatment success rate was 98.2% and 97.9% for surgically treated patients. Out of the patients, 62% appeared relaxed, calm, and serene, while 16% expressed pain or fear during the procedure. Infiltrative administration of local anesthesia caused stress in 22% of patients. This portion was significantly lower in sub-cohorts who received local topical anesthetics (0%) or a combination of systemic and local topical analgesics (7%). Patients (75%) and clinicians (91%) were satisfied with the procedure. Conclusion: Inhaled equimolar nitrous oxide–oxygen procedural sedation used during dental procedures and oral surgery results in high treatment success and satisfaction rates. The administration of additional topical anesthetics helps to reduce the anxiety and stress related to infiltrative anesthesia. Further dedicated studies and prospective trials are needed to confirm these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose the first ARIA block cipher on both MSP430 and Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) microcontrollers. To achieve the optimized ARIA implementation on target embedded processors, core operations of ARIA, such as substitute and diffusion layers, are carefully re-designed for both MSP430 (Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX, USA) and ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers (STMicroelectronics, Geneva, Switzerland). In particular, two bytes of input data in ARIA block cipher are concatenated to re-construct the 16-bit wise word. The 16-bit word-wise operation is executed at once with the 16-bit instruction to improve the performance for the 16-bit MSP430 microcontroller. This approach also optimizes the number of required registers, memory accesses, and operations to half numbers rather than 8-bit word wise implementations. For the ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller, the 8 × 32 look-up table based ARIA block cipher implementation is further optimized with the novel memory access. The memory access is finely scheduled to fully utilize the 3-stage pipeline architecture of ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers. Furthermore, the counter (CTR) mode of operation is more optimized through pre-computation techniques than the electronic code book (ECB) mode of operation. Finally, proposed ARIA implementations on both low-end target microcontrollers (MSP430 and ARM Cortex-M3) achieved (209 and 96 for 128-bit security level, respectively), (241 and 111 for 192-bit security level, respectively), and (274 and 126 for 256-bit security level, respectively). Compared with previous works, the running timing on low-end target microcontrollers (MSP430 and ARM Cortex-M3) is improved by (92.20% and 10.09% for 128-bit security level, respectively), (92.26% and 10.87% for 192-bit security level, respectively), and (92.28% and 10.62% for 256-bit security level, respectively). The proposed ARIA–CTR implementation improved the performance by 6.6% and 4.0% compared to the proposed ARIA–ECB implementations for MSP430 and ARM Cortex-M3 microcontrollers, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy efficiency programmes (EEPs) are schemes operated by utilities or other bodies in order to incentivize energy efficiency improvement, in particular by adoption of energy-efficient products and typically by means of an economic reward. Ample experience has been gained, especially in the U.S., where EEPs have been in use for decades, with the rationale of avoiding additional energy supply by improving energy efficiency. More recently, EEPs have been implemented in Europe and in Switzerland. This review paper presents insights from the U.S., the EU and especially from Switzerland, with a focus on levelised programme cost of saved energy (LPC) as a key performance indicator. These LPC values, which take the perspective of the programme operator, are typically low to very low compared to the cost of electricity supply, thereby representing an important argument in favour of their use. The country examples show that EEPs are being effectively and successfully put into practice, for example, in Switzerland both as (i) a national tender-based scheme (called ProKilowatt) and in the form of a (ii) utility-operated obligation-based scheme (in Geneva). EEPs not only call for diligent implementation but also for suitable legal settings, e.g., in the form of mandatory energy efficiency savings targets (as realised for energy efficiency obligations, EEOs) in combination with programme cost recovery. The main criticism of EEPs is the free-rider effect, which needs to be minimised. On the other hand, EEPs are accompanied by significant co-benefits (environmental, health-related and social) and spillover effects. In their currently prevalent form, EEPs allow one to effectively save energy at a (very) low cost ("low-hanging fruit"). They can hence play an important role in fostering the energy transition; however, they should be implemented as part of a policy portfolio, in combination with other policy instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of emotional responses from consumers toward beer products is an important digital tool to obtain novel information about the acceptability of beers and their optimal physicochemical composition. This research proposed the use of biometrics to assess emotional responses from Mexican beer consumers while tasting top- and bottom-fermented samples. Furthermore, a novel emotional validation assessment using proven evoking images for neutral, negative, and positive emotions was proposed. The results showed that emotional responses obtained from self-reported emoticons and biometrics are correlated to the specific emotions evoked by the visual, aroma, and taste aspects of beers. Consumers preferred bottom-fermentation beers and disliked the wheat-based and higher-bitterness samples. Chemical compounds and concentrations were in accordance to previously reported research for similar beer styles. However, the levels of hordenine were not high enough to evoke positive emotions in the biometric assessment, which opens additional research opportunities to assess higher concentrations of this alkaloid to increase the happiness perception of low or non-alcoholic beers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing research on emotion recognition commonly uses mel spectrogram (MelSpec) and Geneva minimalistic acoustic parameter set (GeMAPS) as acoustic parameters to learn the audio features. MelSpec can represent the time-series variations of each frequency but cannot manage multiple types of audio features. On the other hand, GeMAPS can handle multiple audio features but fails to provide information on their time-series variations. Thus, this study proposes a speech emotion recognition model based on a multi-input deep neural network that simultaneously learns these two audio features. The proposed model comprises three parts, specifically, for learning MelSpec in image format, learning GeMAPS in vector format, and integrating them to predict the emotion. Additionally, a focal loss function is introduced to address the imbalanced data problem among the emotion classes. The results of the recognition experiments demonstrate weighted and unweighted accuracies of 0.6657 and 0.6149, respectively, which are higher than or comparable to those of the existing state-of-the-art methods. Overall, the proposed model significantly improves the recognition accuracy of the emotion "happiness", which has been difficult to identify in previous studies owing to limited data. Therefore, the proposed model can effectively recognize emotions from speech and can be applied for practical purposes with future development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy storage is a key solution to supply renewable electricity on demand and in particular batteries are becoming attractive for consumers who install PV panels. In order to minimize their electricity bill and keep the grid stable, batteries can combine applications. The daily match between PV supply and the electricity load profile is often considered as a determinant for the attractiveness of residential PV-coupled battery systems, however, the previous literature has so far mainly focused on the annual energy balance. In this paper, we analyze the techno-economic impact of adding a battery system to a new PV system that would otherwise be installed on its own, for different residential electricity load profiles in Geneva (Switzerland) and Austin (U.S.) using lithium-ion batteries performing various consumer applications, namely PV self-consumption, demand load-shifting, avoidance of PV curtailment, and demand peak shaving, individually and jointly. We employ clustering of the household's load profile (with 15-minute resolution) for households with low, medium, and high annual electricity consumption in the two locations using a 1:1:1 sizing ratio. Our results show that with this simple sizing rule-of-thumb, the shape of the load profile has a small impact on the net present value of batteries. Overall, our analysis suggests that the effect of the load profile is small and differs across locations, whereas the combination of applications significantly increases profitability while marginally decreasing the share of self-consumption. Moreover, without the combination of applications, batteries are far from being economically viable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The N uptake can affect kiwiberry yield and quality; however, the relationship between an increasing N dose and micronutrient accumulation in leaves and fruit is still to be elucidated. Interrelationships between essential nutrients are one of the most important issues in terms of effectiveness in plant mineral nutrition. A pattern in leaf nutrient accumulation throughout the growing period is required to indicate a suitable sampling time for the purpose of nutrient diagnostics and controlled plant feeding. The experiment was conducted on two commercially available cultivars of kiwiberry, 'Weiki' and 'Geneva', during the 2015–2016 growing seasons with an increasing soil N fertility (30–50–80 mg N kg−1 soil DW) to test the relationship between soil N level and leaf/fruit micronutrient concentration. The leaf Zn, Cu, Fe, and Mn concentrations significantly increased with a higher N supply in 'Geneva', while in 'Weiki' only Mn increased. Leaf B, Fe, and Mn gradually increased throughout the growing season, while Cu decreased. Between mid-July and the beginning of August, the lowest fluctuations in the micronutrient contents were recorded. The effect of the growing season on leaf micronutrient accumulation was highly significant; except for Fe, significantly higher micronutrient levels were revealed in 2016. Compared to the leaves, the growing season effect was smaller in the case of fruit micronutrient concentrations. Irrespective of cultivar, the increase in N fertilization resulted in a higher fruit Mn concentration and was insignificant in the case of other micronutrients. The results indicate that the N dose may affect the accumulation of micronutrients within a certain range depending on the tissue type and the genotype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a noninvasive determination, Raman and XRF analyses showed the possibility of identifying specific phases and elements characteristic of the use of recipes and ingredients imported from Europe, according to the information documented in Chinese and European archives. Two sets of objects, supposed to have been produced during the Qing Dynasty (1662–1912) at the Forbidden City ('imperial bowls' of the Baur Foundation, Geneva) and in the customs district of Guangzhou (Musée Ariana, Geneva), were analyzed with pXRF and also for some objects with Raman microspectroscopy also on-site. The heterogeneity of the colored zones, in three spatial directions, requires the development of a new methodology. We focused particular attention on the cobalt used in the colored areas and marks, drawn either on the body layer (standard underglaze) or on the glaze itself (overglaze). Comparison is made with previous data on Chinese and Vietnamese porcelains from the Yuan (1271–1368) and Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) periods. Combined data for objects attributed to Guangzhou from the Kangxi and Yongzheng periods indicates the use of the same raw materials containing cobalt, associated with arsenic, nickel, zinc, copper and bismuth, according to the European sources. Similarity of the glaze composition and impurities promotes the production of the glazed body with the same raw materials as those used at Jingdezhen. A consistent shift in data for Qianlong style items, which are significantly richer in manganese, is compatible with their partial mixing with Asian cobalt. The deliberate selection of conflicting objects—namely, examples belonging to the other places of production or different periods—are well-observed outside the 'Guangzhou' cluster. Some artifacts have anachronistic purity characteristics that support a production after ca. 1850. For instance, two objects on which certain attributions had been made concerning the stylistic analysis are definitive examples of ceramics using a refined 'cobalt', and therefore now may be assigned to the later production period of the first half of the 19th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grapevine is a climbing plant and allows for the manipulation of vegetative canopies to change the microclimate and exposure of leaves and clusters to solar radiation, affecting the primary and secondary metabolisms of plants. Thus, this work aimed to evaluate how the lyre and Geneva double-curtain (GDC) training systems could contribute to the volatile composition of sparkling wines in replicates of vinifications carried out in the Serra da Mantiqueira (Brazil) in two consecutive summer harvests (2017 and 2018). Fifty-four free volatile compounds were identified by HS-SPME/GC-MS in the wines in both systems and vintages. Multivariate analysis differentiated the vintages in component 1 (22.7%) and the training systems in component 2 (7.1%). The crops were differentiated by aldehydes in 2017 and in 2018 by isoamyl acetate ester, probably derived from the amino acid leucine, the season having been more humid, with lower temperatures and less radiation. For the training systems, besides the alcohol compounds, the GDC was differentiated by the terpenoid compounds geranylacetone and β-damascenone, which may contribute more pleasant aromas to sparkling wines. This work promotes additional research and enables winegrowers, through the management of their vineyards, to achieve sparkling wines with different volatile compositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwaters circulating in Upper Mesozoic carbonates are of great interest for geothermal heat production and storage applications in the Geneva area. This study aims at providing new insights and proposing new interpretations about the mineral-water reactions and the fluid-flow paths mechanisms across the Geneva Basin (GB). Data from previous studies are combined and improved by new ones collected from cold and hot springs and geothermal exploration wells in 2018 and 2020 in the framework of the GEothermies program and HEATSTORE project. Major ions, trace elements, and the isotopes of Oxygen, Hydrogen, Sulfur, Strontium, and Carbo have been analysed and the results show that the sampled waters have a meteoric origin, the carbonate aquifers act as preferential host rocks for geothermal waters, and partial contribution from the Cenozoic sediments can be observed in some samples. The Jura Mountains and the Saleve Ridge are the main catchment areas and an evolution from a pure Ca-HCO3 footprint for the cold springs, to a Na > Ca-HCO3 and a Na-Cl composutions, is observed at the two geothermal wells. The residence time is in the order of a few years for the cold springs and reaches up to 15–20,000 years for the deep wells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The achievement of the targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions set by the Paris Agreements and the Swiss federal law on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 law) requires massive use of renewable energies, which cannot be achieved without their adoption by the general public. The solar cadaster developed as part of the INTERREG G2 Solar project is intended to assess the solar potential of buildings at the scale of Greater Geneva—for both industrial buildings and for individual residential buildings—at a resolution of 1 m. The new version of the solar cadaster is intended to assess the solar potential of roofs, as well as that of vertical facades. The study presented here aims to validate this new version through a comparison with results obtained with two other simulation tools that are widely used and validated by the scientific community. The good accordance with the results obtained with ENVI-met and DIVA-for-Rhino demonstrates the capability of the radiative model developed for the solar cadaster of Greater Geneva to accurately predict the radiation levels of building facades in configurations with randomly distributed buildings (horizontally or vertically). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At first glance, the global art trade—currently valued around $60 billion—is a miniscule piece of global economic production. But due to the unregulated nature of the art market, it serves a key function within the larger network of the accumulation and distribution of capital worldwide. This deregulated market intersects with the offshore domain in freeports, an archipelago of tax-free storage facilities that stretch from Singapore to Geneva to Delaware. The burgeoning of freeports globally suggests that speculation has become a more prominent pattern of art investment, but it also demonstrates that tax avoidance is a goal of such speculators and the result is that more art works are being taken out of circulation and deposited in vaults beyond the view of regulatory authorities. Despite its size, the art trade can demonstrate broader trends in international finance and, by examining offshore art storage that occurs in freeports, it will be possible to locate some of the hidden mechanisms that allow the global art market to flourish on the margins of the economy as well as to perceive a shift in which the economic value of art works predominates over their cultural value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featured Application: Fresh kiwiberry has strong antioxidant properties but has a short shelf life. Hence, dried fruit has great potential in being widely consumed as a health beneficial fruit. This study aimed to investigate the impact of convective and vacuum drying performed at different temperatures on the content of bioactive components of kiwiberry. Dried fruits obtained from Geneva and Weiki cultivars were analyzed for total carotenoid content, total phenolic content (TPC), and antioxidant activity using 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and 2,2′-azino-bis (3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) assays. The secondary goal was to establish drying kinetics and to find the best-fitting model for the drying process. The results showed that the highest total carotenoid content was found in Geneva fruits dried by vacuum method and was equal to 39.55–90.27 µg/g dry matter (d.m.). Considering free radical scavenging activity, the best results were also achieved for vacuum dried Geneva cultivar. These samples exhibited EC50 equal to 0.16–0.51 mg d.m./mL and 0.05–0.24 mg d.m./mL as evaluated using DPPH and ABTS assays, respectively. Vacuum drying method usually better preserved the phenolic content of kiwiberry—samples dried at 50 °C did not differ significantly from fresh material. Generally, the shortest drying time was observed for the samples dried at 70 °C regardless of the drying method. Changing the temperature during drying from 80 to 50 and 60 °C did not cause expected benefits regarding chemical property preservation. In most cases, the Midilli et al. model represented the best fit to describe obtained drying kinetics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As aircraft noise affects large areas around airports, noise exposure calculations need to be highly accurate. In this study, we compare noise exposure measurements with calculations of several thousand single flights at Zurich and Geneva airports, Switzerland, of three aircraft noise calculation programs: sonAIR, a next-generation aircraft noise calculation program, and the two current best-practice programs FLULA2 and AEDT. For one part of the flights, we had access to flight data recorder (FDR) data, which contain flight configuration information that sonAIR can account for. For the other part, only radar data without flight configuration information were available. Overall, all three programs show good results, with mean differences between calculations and measurements smaller than ±0.5 dB in the close range of the airports. sonAIR performs clearly better than the two best-practice programs if FDR data are available. However, in situations without FDR data (reduced set of input data), sonAIR cannot exploit its full potential and performs similarly well as FLULA2 and AEDT. In conclusion, all three programs are well suited to determine averaged noise metrics resulting from complex scenarios consisting of many flights (e.g., yearly air operations), while sonAIR is additionally capable to highly accurately reproduce single flights in greater detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to assess the enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant status of kiwiberry (Actinidia arguta) leaf under different N regimes tested three times in field conditions during the 2015 growing season in two cultivars ('Weiki' and 'Geneva'). Leaf total antioxidant capacity using ABTS, DPPH and FRAP tests was evaluated in the years 2015 to 2017, which experienced different weather conditions. Both cultivars exhibited a significant fall in leaf L-ascorbic acid (L-AA) and reduced glutathione (GSH) as well as global content of these compounds during the growing season, while total phenolic contents slightly ('Weiki') or significantly ('Geneva') increased. There was a large fluctuation in antioxidative enzyme activity during the season. The correlation between individual antioxidants and trolox equivalent antioxidant capacity (TEAC) depended on the plant development phase. The study revealed two peaks of an increase in TEAC at the start and end of the growing season. Leaf L-AA, global phenolics, APX, CAT and TEAC depended on the N level, but thiol compounds were not affected. Over the three years, TEAC decreased as soil N fertility increased, and the strength of the N effect was year dependent. The relationship between leaf N content and ABTS and FRAP tests was highly negative. The antioxidant properties of kiwiberry leaves were found to be closely related to the plant development phase and affected by soil N fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Geneva Free Port in Switzerland has paved the way for a new generation of art and luxury free ports. These are critical spatial pivots for the management of art assets, including storage and transactions of artworks, and serve as proxy to examine mechanisms for the capture and generation of value, integral but also outside the global art market. Drawing from the trajectory of the Geneva Free Port and an interdisciplinary body of scholarship on "offshore" and other special zones of production, and value circulation in human geography, anthropology, history, and sociology, this article frames free ports in a longer genealogy of offshore capitalism. First, we claim that the emergence of the Geneva Free Port prefigures and helps illuminate contemporary transformations in offshore capitalism; second, these spaces are more deeply imbricated with public and state authorities than previously suggested. Finally, a holistic understanding of art capital—works of art for investment and asset management—requires an encompassing view of free ports not as accidental and exceptional features in the world of high art but as spaces deeply implicated in the creation and operation of the art market more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Co-pelletization of waste biomass and microalgae is an attractive option for using bioenergy efficiently. This work investigates the potential of microalgae as a binder to improve the energy consumption and physical and thermal properties of a novel pellet. Wood waste biomass was blended with microalgae in proportions of 15%, 30%, and 50% to investigate its properties using a single pelleting device and thermodynamic analysis. The results showed that, under the conditions of temperature (80–160 °C), pressure (120–200 MPa), and moisture content (6%–14%), blending microalgae can effectively increase the bulk density and mechanical durability of the pellets by 9%–36% and 0.7%–1.6%, respectively, and can significantly reduce the energy consumption of pelleting by 23.5%–40.4%. Blending microalgae can significantly reduce the energy consumption of pelleting by 23.5%–40.4%. Moreover, when the amount of Chlorella vulgaris powder (CVP) is 50%, a maximum bulk density (BD) of 1580.2 kg/m3, a durability (DU) of 98%, and a minimum energy consumption of 25.2 kJ/kg were obtained under the optimum conditions of temperature (120 °C), pressure (120 MPa), and moisture content (10%), respectively. Besides, the interaction between the microalgae and sawdust does exist, and their effect on the co-combustion process is inhibitive (0–300 °C) and accelerative (300–780 °C). When the amount of microalgae was 15%, the average activation energy of the pellet was a minimum value, which was 133.21 kJ/mol and 134.60 kJ/mol calculated by the Kissinger–Akahira–Sunose method and Ozawa–Flynn–Wall method, respectively. Therefore, the energy consumption, physical, and thermal properties of the novel pellet could be improved and meet the ISO standard (International Organization for Standardization of 17225, Geneva, Switzerland, 2016) by blending 15% of microalgae. Overall, the use of microalgae as a binder can indeed improve pellet quality, and it can be considered a significant way to utilize microalgae in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pelletization is a significant approach for the efficient utilization of biomass energy. Sunflower seed husk is a common solid waste in the process of oil production. The novelty of this study was to determine the parameters during production of a novel pellet made from sunflower seed husk. The energy consumption (W) and physical properties (bulk density (BD) and mechanical durability (DU)) of the novel pellet were evaluated and optimized at the laboratory by using a pelletizer and response surface methodology (RSM) under a controlled moisture content (4%–14%), compression pressure (100–200 MPa), and die temperature (70–170 °C). The results show that the variables of temperature, pressure, and moisture content of raw material are positively correlated with BD and DU. Increasing the temperature and moisture content of raw materials can effectively reduce W, while increasing the pressure has an adverse effect on W. The optimum conditions of temperature (150 °C), pressure (180 MPa), and moisture content (12%) led to a BD of 1117.44 kg/m3, DU of 98.8%, and W of 25.3 kJ/kg in the lab. Overall, although the nitrogen content was slightly high, the novel manufactured pellets had excellent performance based on ISO 17225 (International Organization for Standardization of 17225, Geneva, Switzerland, 2016). Thus, sunflower seed husk could be considered as a potential feedstock for biomass pelletization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The residential sector accounts for a large share of worldwide energy consumption, yet is difficult to characterise, since consumption profiles depend on several factors from geographical location to individual building occupant behaviour. Given this difficulty, the fact that energy used in this sector is primarily derived from fossil fuels and the latest energy policies around the world (e.g., Europe 20-20-20), a method able to systematically integrate multi-energy networks and low carbon resources in urban systems is clearly required. This work proposes such a method, which uses process integration techniques and mixed integer linear programming to optimise energy systems at both the individual building and district levels. Parametric optimisation is applied as a systematic way to generate interesting solutions for all budgets (i.e., investment cost limits) and two approaches to temporal data treatment are evaluated: monthly average and hourly typical day resolution. The city center of Geneva is used as a first case study to compare the time resolutions and results highlight that implicit peak shaving occurs when data are reduced to monthly averages. Consequently, solutions reveal lower operating costs and higher self-sufficiency scenarios compared to using a finer resolution but with similar relative cost contributions. Therefore, monthly resolution is used for the second case study, the whole canton of Geneva, in the interest of reducing the data processing and computation time as a primary objective of the study is to discover the main cost contributors. The canton is used as a case study to analyse the penetration of low temperature, CO2-based, advanced fourth generation district energy networks with population density. The results reveal that only areas with a piping cost lower than 21.5 k€/100 m2ERA connect to the low-temperature network in the intermediate scenarios, while all areas must connect to achieve the minimum operating cost result. Parallel coordinates are employed to better visualise the key performance indicators at canton and commune level together with the breakdown of energy (electricity and natural gas) imports/exports and investment cost to highlight the main contributors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]