“Noisy”issues in road acoustics:A white paper

Despite almost a century of studies dealing with traffic noise,researchers and practitioners still face old and new issues when designing a low-noise pavement.Given that,this manuscript aims at focusing on a number of unsolved questions,namely theoretical or technological.1)Is it viable to balance diverse road-related needs(i.e.,noise,expected life,texture levels,and friction)?2)How much does the pavement material affect its acoustic performance(the remaining factors being constant)?3)How much reliable is the relationship between road texture and mixture aggregate gradation?Based on the analysis of these issues,it emerges that:1)optimal pavement design involves complex mix optimization and there are theoretical and practical bases to set up a balanced approach to address the complexity of pavement design;2)high percentages of crumb rubber could optimise road acoustic response but this latter has a relationship with the tyre/road noise(expressed,for example,in terms of close proximity index)that calls for further investigation;3)aggregate gradation appears to be a reliable basis to predict surface texture and therefore,under given boundary conditions,tyre/road noise;and 4)further studies and investigations are needed in terms of local calibration of deterioration curves and setting up of a sound method to assess the frequency response of asphalt concretes and to govern on-site noise indicators based on mixture properties.

Evaluating Group Formation in Virtual Communities

In this paper, we are interested in answering the following research question: "Is it possible to form effective groups in virtual communities by exploiting trust information without significant overhead, similarly to real user communities?"In order to answer this question, instead of adopting the largely used approach of exploiting the opinions provided by all the users of the community(called global reputation), we propose to use a particular form of reputation, called local reputation. We also propose an algorithm for group formation able to implement the proposed procedure to form effective groups in virtual communities. Another interesting question is how to measure the effectiveness of groups in virtual communities. To this aim we introduce the index in a measure of the effectiveness of the group formation. We tested our algorithm by realizing some experimental trials on real data from the real world EPINIONS and CIAO communities, showing the significant advantages of our procedure w.r.t. another prominent approach based on traditional global reputation.

An experimental method to design porous asphalts to account for surface requirements

Porous asphalts have supplementary surface and volumetric properties(e.g., acoustic absorption, drain ability, texture, and friction). These properties are linked to intrinsic factors(e.g., gradation and bitumen content) and extrinsic factors(e.g., traffic load), while their evolution over time depends on complex phenomena and processes that cause their deterioration and therefore affect safety, noise, and budget. Despite the decay of so many and complex properties over time, there is a lack of criteria to synergistically optimize the pavement system. Consequently, the objective of this study is to set up and validate a design method that synergistically addresses the most relevant properties of friction courses as a part of a pavement structure. The abovementioned method is based on indepth analyses of the literature and on laboratory and on-site tests carried for several years in order to evaluate the decay over time of the main surface and volumetric properties.Results show that (1) the level of fulfilment of single requirements varies over time and among the characteristics;(2) a sound optimization of the design of the mix in order to balance the different characteristics is needed;(3) further studies are needed because of uncertainty in predicting the main surface properties.

Effectiveness of aerobic pretreatment of municipal solid waste for accelerating biogas generation during simulated landfilling

This study evaluates the effectiveness of aerobic pretreatment of municipal solid waste （MSW） on reducing lag phase and accelerating biogas generation. Aerobic pretreatment degree （APD） was determined on the basis of reduction in volatile solids （VS） on a wet weight basis. In this study, intermittent aeration （IA） was applied to three reactors as a main aeration mode; since a single reactor was operated under continuous aeration mode. However, the purpose of the experiment was to reduce VS content of waste, irrespective of the comparison between aeration modes. Fresh MSW was first pretreated aerobically with different aeration rates （10, 40, 60 and 85 L/min/m3） for the period of 30- 50 days, resulting in VS-loss equivalent to 20%, 27%, 38% and 53q4 on w/w basis for the wastes AI, A2, A3 and A4, respectively. The cumulative biogas production, calculated based on the modified Gompertz model were 384, 195, 353,215, and 114 L/kg VS for the wastes A0, A1, A2, A3 and A4, respectively. Untreated waste （A0） showed a long lag phase; whereas the lag phases of pretreated MSW were reduced by more than 90e/L Aerobically pretreated wastes reached stable methanogenic phase within 41 days compared to 418 days for untreated waste. The waste mass decreased by about 8% to 27% compared to untreated MSW, indicative that even more MSW could be placed in the same landfill. The study confirmed the effectiveness of aerobic pretreatment of MSW prior to landfilling on reducing lag phase and accelerating biogas generation.