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Plant phenotyping, that is, the quantitative assessment of plant traits including growth, morphology, physiology, and yield, is a critical aspect towards efficient and effective crop management. Currently, plant phenotyping is a manually intensive and time consuming process, which involves human operators making measurements in the field, based on visual estimates or using hand-held devices. In this work, methods for automated grapevine phenotyping are developed, aiming to canopy volume estimation and bunch detection and counting. It is demonstrated that both measurements can be effectively performed in the field using a consumer-grade depth camera mounted onboard an agricultural vehicle.

In this paper we present an exhaustive description of the basic types of CNTFETs. In particular we review two models, already proposed by us, which allow an easy implementation in circuit simulators, both in analog and in digital applications., Comment: 14 pages, 17 figures

This article presents a review on the main applications of the fourth fundamental circuit element, named "memristor", which had been proposed for the first time by Leon Chua and has recently been developed by a team at HP Laboratories led by Stanley Williams. In particular, after a brief analysis of memristor theory with a description of the first memristor, manufactured at HP Laboratories, we present its main applications in the circuit design and computer technology, together with future developments., Comment: 12 pages, 17 figures in International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Technology (IJAET), june 2015

A new DC thermal model of Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistors (CNTFETs) is proposed. The model is based on a number of fitting parameters depending on bias conditions by third order polynomials. The model includes three thermal parameters describing CNTFET behaviour in terms of saturation drain current, threshold voltage and M exponent in the knee region versus the temperature. To confirm the validity of the proposed thermal model, the simulations were performed in very different thermal conditions, obtaining I-V characteristics perfectly coincident with those of other models. The very low CPU calculation time makes the proposed model particularly suitable to be implemented in CAD applications., Comment: 9 pages, 2 figures; International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Technology, April 2015

In this paper we present an acquisition chain for the measurement of blood arterial pressure based on the oscillometric method. This method does not suffer from any limitation as the well-known auscultatory method and it is suited for wearable health monitoring systems. The device uses a pressure sensor whose signal is filtered, digitalized and analyzed by a microcontroller. Local analysis allows the evaluation of the systolic and diastolic pressure values which can be used for local alarms, data collection and remote monitoring., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, sent to International Journal of Advances in Engineering and Technology (IJAET). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1212.0651

In this paper we present an electronic system to perform a non-invasive measurement of the blood pressure based on the oscillometric method, which does not suffer from the limitations of the well-known auscultatory one. Moreover the proposed system is able to evaluate both the systolic and diastolic blood pressure values and makes use of a microcontroller and a Sallen-Key active filter. With reference to other similar devices, a great improvement of our measurement system is achieved since it performs the transmission of the systolic and diastolic pressure values to a remote computer. This aspect is very important when the simultaneous monitoring of multi-patients is required. The proposed system, prototyped and tested at the Electron Devices Laboratory (Electrical and Information Engineering Department) of Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy, is characterized by originality, by plainness of use and by a very high level of automation (so called intelligent system)., Comment: 13 pages, 15 figures, accepted for pubblication in International Journal of Advances in Engineering & Technology, Vol. 5, Issue 2, January 2013

We discuss the possibility of implementing a novel bio-sensing platform based on the observation of the shift of the leaky surface plasmon mode that occurs at the edge of the plasmonic band gap of metal gratings when an analyte is deposited on top of the metallic structure. We provide experimental proof of the sensing capabilities of a two-dimensional array of gold nano-patches by observing color variations in the diffracted field when the air overlayer is replaced with a small quantity of Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA). Effects of rounded corners and surface imperfections are also discussed. Finally, we also report proof of changes in color intensities as a function of the air/filling ratio of the structure and discuss their relation with the diffracted spectra.