Polidrone – Business Plan of a multipurpose modular drone produced via FDM

El TFG, realizado conjuntamente con la oficina I3P del Politécnico de Turín, constituye un Plan de Negocio para un dron creado y patentado por una serie de personas vinculadas al Politécnico de Turín con el fin de evaluar su viabilidad. La primera fase del Proyecto fue la definición de los casos de uso o nichos de mercado para los que iba destinado el dron. Para ello se tuvo que tener una absoluta comprensión mecánica del dron, destacando nuestras ventajas competitivas. También se realizó una serie de encuestas, entrevistas y análisis de mercado. Tomando como base los casos de uso elegidos, se realizó el Plan de Negocio completo. El cual analiza los puntos fuertes del dron, los segmentos y el tamaño de mercado, los clientes potenciales, la forma de comercialización, su distribución y venta, su promoción, fijar el precio, los proveedores, los materiales y equipos necesarios, su plan de financiación y beneficios esperados en 5 años, análisis de la competencia, etc. Finalmente, el Plan de Negocio fue presentado como concursante en una competición regional de proyectos innovadores. La START CUP Piemonte-Valle d’Aosta.Departamento de Ciencias de los Materiales e Ingeniería Metalúrgica, Expresión Gráfica en la Ingeniería, Ingeniería Cartográfica, Geodesia y Fotogrametría, Ingeniería Mecánica e Ingeniería de los Procesos de FabricaciónGrado en Ingeniería Mecánic

Upgrading Italy's Industrial Capacity: Industry 4.0 across Regions and Sectors

How are Industry 4.0 investments distributed across Italian regions and sectors? Which are the main drivers of diffusion? To address these questions, in this study we exploit rich firm survey data on the adoption of the new digital technologies and examine their adoption patterns. On the one hand, we produce novel insights into the drivers of structural change in the Italian economy, and on the other, we provide evidence on the technological upgrading of Italy's production capacity that is relevant for policy. The results of econometric tests on region-sector pairs indicate that corporate governance characteristics, innovation patterns and type of industrial relations are significant predictors of the uneven regional and sectoral distribution of Industry 4.0 investments

Fine-Grained Image Analysis with Deep Learning: A Survey

Fine-grained image analysis (FGIA) is a longstanding and fundamental problem in computer vision and pattern recognition, and underpins a diverse set of real-world applications. The task of FGIA targets analyzing visual objects from subordinate categories, e.g., species of birds or models of cars. The small inter-class and large intra-class variation inherent to fine-grained image analysis makes it a challenging problem. Capitalizing on advances in deep learning, in recent years we have witnessed remarkable progress in deep learning powered FGIA. In this paper we present a systematic survey of these advances, where we attempt to re-define and broaden the field of FGIA by consolidating two fundamental fine-grained research areas -- fine-grained image recognition and fine-grained image retrieval. In addition, we also review other key issues of FGIA, such as publicly available benchmark datasets and related domain-specific applications. We conclude by highlighting several research directions and open problems which need further exploration from the community.Comment: Accepted by IEEE TPAM

Exploring the Adoption of Service-Dominant Logic as an Integrative Framework for Assessing Energy Transitions

Energy transitions (ETs) can solve some societal problems but must transform societies. Accordingly, socio-technical transitions and other systemic frameworks have been used to assess ETs. However, based on these frameworks, assessments miss a value co-creation orientation, the focus on actors' researched benefits and enabled service exchange, and the consideration of needed de/re-institutionalization practices. Analyzing those elements could prevent socioeconomic shocks and loss of opportunities and unfold possible ET challenges against ET viability and sustainability. Intending to develop a theory synthesis work for enriching previous frameworks, we propose service-dominant logic (S-D logic) as an integrative framework to assess ETs. We offer a literature review on ET systems' frameworks to compare them with the proposal. We also identify the implications of adopting S-D logic for rethinking energy systems' dynamics and ETs. Thus, we contribute to the literature by providing an integrative framework for assessing ETs and we illustrate its potentialities by deriving some challenges of the current Italian ET. This study paves the way for deeper analyses on the contribution of S-D logic to ETs and the operationalization of other systems' frameworks in our integrative one. Merging with quantitative models could also follow

Digital Twins:State of the Art Theory and Practice, Challenges, and Open Research Questions

Digital Twin was introduced over a decade ago, as an innovative all-encompassing tool, with perceived benefits including real-time monitoring, simulation and forecasting. However, the theoretical framework and practical implementations of digital twins (DT) are still far from this vision. Although successful implementations exist, sufficient implementation details are not publicly available, therefore it is difficult to assess their effectiveness, draw comparisons and jointly advance the DT methodology. This work explores the various DT features and current approaches, the shortcomings and reasons behind the delay in the implementation and adoption of digital twin. Advancements in machine learning, internet of things and big data have contributed hugely to the improvements in DT with regards to its real-time monitoring and forecasting properties. Despite this progress and individual company-based efforts, certain research gaps exist in the field, which have caused delay in the widespread adoption of this concept. We reviewed relevant works and identified that the major reasons for this delay are the lack of a universal reference framework, domain dependence, security concerns of shared data, reliance of digital twin on other technologies, and lack of quantitative metrics. We define the necessary components of a digital twin required for a universal reference framework, which also validate its uniqueness as a concept compared to similar concepts like simulation, autonomous systems, etc. This work further assesses the digital twin applications in different domains and the current state of machine learning and big data in it. It thus answers and identifies novel research questions, both of which will help to better understand and advance the theory and practice of digital twins

Progress in ambient assisted systems for independent living by the elderly

One of the challenges of the ageing population in many countries is the efficient delivery of health and care services, which is further complicated by the increase in neurological conditions among the elderly due to rising life expectancy. Personal care of the elderly is of concern to their relatives, in case they are alone in their homes and unforeseen circumstances occur, affecting their wellbeing. The alternative; i.e. care in nursing homes or hospitals is costly and increases further if specialized care is mobilized to patients’ place of residence. Enabling technologies for independent living by the elderly such as the ambient assisted living systems (AALS) are seen as essential to enhancing care in a cost-effective manner. In light of significant advances in telecommunication, computing and sensor miniaturization, as well as the ubiquity of mobile and connected devices embodying the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), end-to-end solutions for ambient assisted living have become a reality. The premise of such applications is the continuous and most often real-time monitoring of the environment and occupant behavior using an event-driven intelligent system, thereby providing a facility for monitoring and assessment, and triggering assistance as and when needed. As a growing area of research, it is essential to investigate the approaches for developing AALS in literature to identify current practices and directions for future research. This paper is, therefore, aimed at a comprehensive and critical review of the frameworks and sensor systems used in various ambient assisted living systems, as well as their objectives and relationships with care and clinical systems. Findings from our work suggest that most frameworks focused on activity monitoring for assessing immediate risks while the opportunities for integrating environmental factors for analytics and decision-making, in particular for the long-term care were often overlooked. The potential for wearable devices and sensors, as well as distributed storage and access (e.g. cloud) are yet to be fully appreciated. There is a distinct lack of strong supporting clinical evidence from the implemented technologies. Socio-cultural aspects such as divergence among groups, acceptability and usability of AALS were also overlooked. Future systems need to look into the issues of privacy and cyber security

Missouri S&T Magazine, April 1970

https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/alumni-magazine/1264/thumbnail.jp

COMPLEX SYSTEMS FOR THE ECONOMIC EVALUATION OF HEALTHCARE IN ONCOLOGY

1noNell’ambito dell' economia della salute si sta assistendo a una dura lotta negli ultimi anni rappresentata da un lato, dal taglio delle risorse da parte dei governi e, dall'altra parte, dall'aumento della domanda di salute. Inoltre, un altro fattore complesso è rappresentato dal rapido aumento del costo dei farmaci di nuova generazione, in particolare nel campo dell'oncologia, legato allo sviluppo di nuovi bersagli molecolari per l'immunoterapia. Lo scopo di questo manoscritto è valutare la relazione tra gli alti costi dei farmaci emergenti in oncologia e la loro relativa tossicità e realizzare un modello quantitativo per la previsione del numero di nuovi casi dei quattro tumori con le più alte incidenze (prostata, seno , polmone e colon-rettale) per stimare il futuro dispendio di droga negli Stati Uniti. Un elemento caratteristico di questo lavoro è lo studio di modelli complessi che stanno diventando sempre più importanti in campo economico e sanitario. La relazione tra tossicità e costo dei farmaci è stata valutata attraverso l'uso dell'analisi del cluster e della tassellatura di Voronoi. Abbiamo anche adottato un algoritmo per la creazione di una rete neurale artificiale (ANN) che consentirebbe, attraverso l'apprendimento basato sul tempo di fattori di rischio correlati al cancro, di stimare l'incidenza dei suddetti tumori maligni fino al 2050. Il costo per un il singolo paziente è stato stimato considerando un paziente ideale con un'altezza di 1,60 m e un peso di 60 kg idoneo a ricevere tutte le terapie attualmente disponibili. Il nostro pacchetto software è stato Matlab R2014b. L'analisi costo/tossicità ha mostrato l'assenza di una relazione tra l'aumento del costo dei farmaci antitumorali e la diminuzione del tasso di eventi avversi gravi (SAE) e le interruzioni (D) come evidenziato dalla presenza di farmaci costosi nel cluster 5 caratterizzato da massima tossicità. L'analisi di ANN ha evidenziato una diminuzione dell'incidenza delle quattro malattie, la più grande delle quali nei tumori del polmone (da 69 casi / 100.000 abitanti nel 1992 a 32 / 100.000 nel 2050). Per quanto riguarda il tumore al seno, la spesa stimata per il trattamento dei due principali tipi istologici (HER2 positivi e HER2 negativi) sarà di $1,435,532,808$ e $4,421,355,552, rispettivamente. Per quanto riguarda l'immunoterapia, la spesa relativa all'utilizzo dei tre agenti principali varierà nel 2050 da$ 1,616,529,467 (Pembrolizumab) a $2,782,155,725 (Nivolumab). In conclusione, i nostri risultati si concentrano sulla necessità di ottimizzare la valutazione del rapporto costi/benefici e costo/tossicità e sottolineano come l'ammontare della spesa per l'uso di farmaci di nuova generazione meriti un'attenta valutazione al fine di garantirne la sostenibilità futura.The health economy is witnessing a hard fight in recent years. On one side, the cut of resources by the governments and, on the other side, the increase in health demand. Additionally, another complex factor is represented by the rapid increase in the cost of new-generation drugs, especially in the oncology field, linked to the development of new molecular targets for immunotherapy. The purpose of this manuscript is to evaluate the relationship between the high costs of drugs emerging in oncology and their relative toxicity and to realize a quantitative model for the prediction of the number of new cases of the four tumors with the highest incidences (prostate, breast, lung and colon-rectal) in order to estimate the future drug expenditure in the United States. A characteristic element of this work is the study of complex models that are becoming increasingly important in the economic and health fields. The relationship between the toxicity and the cost of drugs was evaluated through the use of the cluster analysis and the Voronoi tessellation. We have also adopted an algorithm for the creation of an artificial neural network (ANN) that would allow, through the time-based learning of cancer-related risk factors, to estimate the incidence of the aforementioned malignancies up to 2050. The cost for a single patient was estimated considering an ideal patient with a height of 1.60 m and a weight of 60 kg eligible for receiving all the therapies currently available. Our software package Matlab R2014b. The cost/toxicity analysis showed the absence of a relationship between the increase of the cost of cancer drugs and the decrease in the rate of severe adverse events (SAE) and discontinuations (D) as evidenced by the presence of expensive drugs in the cluster 5 characterized by maximum toxicity. Analysis by ANN highlighted a decrease in the incidence of the four diseases, the largest of which in lung tumors (from 69 cases/100,000 inhabitants in 1992 to 32/100,000 in 2050). As for breast cancer, the estimated expenditure for the treatment of the two main histological types (HER2 positive and HER2 negative) will be in 2050$ 1,435,532,808 and $4,421,355,552, respectively. Regarding immunotherapy, the expenditure related to the use of the three main agents will vary in 2050 from$ 1,616,529,467 (Pembrolizumab) to $ 2,782,155,725 (Nivolumab). In conclusion, our results focus on the need to optimize the evaluation of the cost/benefit ratio and cost/toxicity and underline how the amount of expenditure for the use of new generation drugs deserves careful evaluation in order to ensure their future sustainability.openopenTartari FrancescaTartari, Francesc

Pixel-Wise Recognition for Holistic Surgical Scene Understanding

This paper presents the Holistic and Multi-Granular Surgical Scene Understanding of Prostatectomies (GraSP) dataset, a curated benchmark that models surgical scene understanding as a hierarchy of complementary tasks with varying levels of granularity. Our approach enables a multi-level comprehension of surgical activities, encompassing long-term tasks such as surgical phases and steps recognition and short-term tasks including surgical instrument segmentation and atomic visual actions detection. To exploit our proposed benchmark, we introduce the Transformers for Actions, Phases, Steps, and Instrument Segmentation (TAPIS) model, a general architecture that combines a global video feature extractor with localized region proposals from an instrument segmentation model to tackle the multi-granularity of our benchmark. Through extensive experimentation, we demonstrate the impact of including segmentation annotations in short-term recognition tasks, highlight the varying granularity requirements of each task, and establish TAPIS's superiority over previously proposed baselines and conventional CNN-based models. Additionally, we validate the robustness of our method across multiple public benchmarks, confirming the reliability and applicability of our dataset. This work represents a significant step forward in Endoscopic Vision, offering a novel and comprehensive framework for future research towards a holistic understanding of surgical procedures.Comment: Preprint submitted to Medical Image Analysis. Official extension of previous MICCAI 2022 (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-16449-1_42) and ISBI 2023 (https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10230819) orals. Data and codes are available at https://github.com/BCV-Uniandes/GraS