The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive report on the state of the art on the technologies used in the modeling of energy storage systems by latent heat in buildings, and draw lines on perspectives on the technology evolution in this sector. In the first part, the emphasis is put mainly on the two main lines of research: experimental and numerical. In the second part, the main trends of research in this sector have been followed. An anatomical operation of more than 100 documents (published between 2006 and 2016), on the behavior of storage systems integrating Phase Change Materials (PCM), covering a large number of configurations treatment and their applications in thermal comfort of buildings area, has shown that the information published in this topic are very diverse and enormous, but in many cases are insufficient. The results show that, with suitable design, the PCM can contribute to the reduction of costs and achieve energy reductions in buildings, guaranteeing a comfortable interior environment. The evaluation of this multitude of documents gave the following remark: The effectiveness of any proposed approach to a numerical study is a concept with ambiguities, depending upon the method used, its precision, the problem to be modeled, the convergence criteria and the input parameters choice. The diversity of experimental conditions and the variety of results revealed that the published works are not directly comparable.

The current paper presents an experimental validation of photovoltaic (PV) source emulation using a real-time dSpace controller. The PV source emulator is a nonlinear power electronic device used to provide in real-time the electrical behavior of PV panels by tracking the PV current–voltage (I–V) characteristic. It aims to deliver nearly the same current and voltage as an actual PV module without depending on atmospheric conditions. This innovative tool is able to aid researchers in PV systems to perform their tests and measurements at the desired weather parameters without time, space and cost constraints. The proposed PV emulator is based on a simple and efficient adaptive state feedback control that ensures good accuracy and high dynamic response compared to the existing commercial PV emulators based on the programmable power supply, which improves significantly the static and dynamic performances of existing PV emulators.

The biased X-ray field and the subtle difference in X-ray attenuation between normal and abnormal breast tissues prevent the biomedical sensors to generate mammograms with good quality. These are the common imperfections in the acquisition systems (sensor) of Mammography which contribute towards the degradation of mammogram image quality. This paper aims to develop a contrast enhancement model for mammograms so that the human or machine vision can distinguish easily among the variants of breast lesions and predict their severity. The proposed mammogram enhancement model exploits locally the proprieties of the sigmoidal function based on multiobjective Genetic Algorithm for improving the contrast of lesions along with a simultaneous increment in various Image Quality Assessment (IQA) parameters like: EME, EC, AMBEn and FSIM. Herein, the multi-objective optimization problem is transformed into a single-objective optimization to find a unique solution for mammogram enhancement. An increase in these IQA metrics is indicative of better contrast, edge content, and conservation of brightness and other diagnostics information. Simulations of the proposed enhancement model are carried out on mammograms from the mini-MIAS database for benchmarking and validation of results.

Three-dimensional (3D) printing offers new opportunities in surgical planning and medical education, yet high costs and technological complexity often limit its widespread use, especially in low-resource settings. This study presents a personalized, cost-effective, and anatomically accurate liver model designed using open-source tools and affordable 3D-printing techniques. Segmentation of hepatic CT images was performed in 3D Slicer using a region-growing method, and the resulting models were optimized and exported as STL files. The external mold was printed with Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) using PLA+, while internal structures such as vessels and tumors were fabricated via Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) printing using PLA Pro resin. The final assembly was cast in food-grade gelatin to mimic liver tissue texture. The complete model was produced for under USD 50, with an average total production time of under 128 h. An exploratory pedagogical evaluation with five medical trainees yielded high Likert scores for anatomical understanding (4.6), spatial awareness (4.4), planning confidence (4.2), and realism (4.4). This model demonstrated utility in preoperative discussions and training simulations. The proposed workflow enables the fabrication of low-cost, realistic hepatic phantoms suitable for education and surgical rehearsal, promoting the integration of 3D printing into everyday clinical practice.

The power converters Z-source topology are becoming a promoter solution for the energy conversion. This topology has the ability to boost and convert the voltage in a single-stage, unlike the famous two-stage conventionnel structure. The Quasi-Z-Source Inverter (QZSI) is nowadays the subject of several research works. However, it is the most suitable for PV applications, due to his continuous input current, which allows to harvest the maximum power available from the PV panels. In this regard, this paper investigates the dynamic characteristics of the QZSI through the small signal analysis, as well as the scheme control with the SVPWM technique for QZSI in standalone mode. The simulation results illustrate the practicability and the validity of the control scheme proposed.