Materials and techniques of Art Nouveau architecture in Italy and Portugal: a first insight for an European route to consistent restoration

The results of the investigations on building materials and techniques of Casa Major Pessoa, a typical Art Nouveau construction in Aveiro (Portugal), and two coeval Art Nouveau buildings in Bologna (Italy) are presented as a methodological contribution to the restoration of this kind of buildings. This is the first step to ascertain the existence of a common thread between local materials, technologies and architecture in European countries at the same period. A holistic approach was adopted: materials were investigated along with architectural, structural and technological features, in order to achieve a first insight into the Art Nouveau architecture in Europe in particular for its consistent restoration without loss of historical memory

HySenS data exploitation for urban land cover analysis

This paper addresses the use of HySenS airborne hyperspectral data for environmental urban monitoring. It is known that hyperspectral data can help to characterize some of the relations between soil composition, vegetation characteristics, and natural/artificial materials in urbanized areas. During the project we collected DAIS and ROSIS data over the urban test area of Pavia, Northern Italy, though due to a late delivery of ROSIS data only DAIS data was used in this work. Here we show results referring to an accurate characterization and classification of land cover/use, using different supervised approaches, exploiting spectral as well as spatial information. We demonstrate the possibility to extract from the hyperspectral data information which is very useful for environmental characterization of urban areas

HySenS data exploitation for urban land cover analysis

This paper addresses the use of HySenS airborne hyperspectral data for environmental urban monitoring. It is known that hyperspectral data can help to characterize some of the relations between soil composition, vegetation characteristics, and natural/artificial materials in urbanized areas. During the project we collected DAIS and ROSIS data over the urban test area of Pavia, Northern Italy, though due to a late delivery of ROSIS data only DAIS data was used in this work. Here we show results referring to an accurate characterization and classification of land cover/use, using different supervised approaches, exploiting spectral as well as spatial information. We demonstrate the possibility to extract from the hyperspectral data information which is very useful for environmental characterization of urban areas

Telephone conversation impairs sustained visual attention via a central bottleneck

Recent research has shown that holding telephone conversations disrupts one's driving ability. We asked whether this effect could be attributed to a visual attention impairment. In Experiment 1, participants conversed on a telephone or listened to a narrative while engaged in multiple object tracking (MOT), a task requiring sustained visual attention. We found that MOT was disrupted in the telephone conversation condition, relative to single-task MOT performance, but that listening to a narrative had no effect. In Experiment 2, we asked which component of conversation might be interfering with MOT performance. We replicated the conversation and single-task conditions of Experiment 1 and added two conditions in which participants heard a sequence of words over a telephone. In the shadowing condition, participants simply repeated each word in the sequence. In the generation condition, participants were asked to generate a new word based on each word in the sequence. Word generation interfered with MOT performance, but shadowing did not. The data indicate that telephone conversation disrupts attention at a central stage, the act of generating verbal stimuli, rather than at a peripheral stage, such as listening or speaking

Diffusion tensor imaging of Parkinson's disease, multiple system atrophy and progressive supranuclear palsy: a tract-based spatial statistics study

Although often clinically indistinguishable in the early stages, Parkinson's disease (PD), Multiple System Atrophy (MSA) and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) have distinct neuropathological changes. The aim of the current study was to identify white matter tract neurodegeneration characteristic of each of the three syndromes. Tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) was used to perform a whole-brain automated analysis of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data to compare differences in fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) between the three clinical groups and healthy control subjects. Further analyses were conducted to assess the relationship between these putative indices of white matter microstructure and clinical measures of disease severity and symptoms. In PSP, relative to controls, changes in DTI indices consistent with white matter tract degeneration were identified in the corpus callosum, corona radiata, corticospinal tract, superior longitudinal fasciculus, anterior thalamic radiation, superior cerebellar peduncle, medial lemniscus, retrolenticular and anterior limb of the internal capsule, cerebral peduncle and external capsule bilaterally, as well as the left posterior limb of the internal capsule and the right posterior thalamic radiation. MSA patients also displayed differences in the body of the corpus callosum corticospinal tract, cerebellar peduncle, medial lemniscus, anterior and superior corona radiata, posterior limb of the internal capsule external capsule and cerebral peduncle bilaterally, as well as the left anterior limb of the internal capsule and the left anterior thalamic radiation. No significant white matter abnormalities were observed in the PD group. Across groups, MD correlated positively with disease severity in all major white matter tracts. These results show widespread changes in white matter tracts in both PSP and MSA patients, even at a mid-point in the disease process, which are not found in patients with PD

Data-driven decentralized breeding increases prediction accuracy in a challenging crop production environment

Crop breeding must embrace the broad diversity of smallholder agricultural systems to ensure food security to the hundreds of millions of people living in challenging production environments. This need can be addressed by combining genomics, farmers’ knowledge, and environmental analysis into a data-driven decentralized approach (3D-breeding). We tested this idea as a proof-of-concept by comparing a durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) decentralized trial distributed as incomplete blocks in 1,165 farmer-managed fields across the Ethiopian highlands with a benchmark representing genomic prediction applied to conventional breeding. We found that 3D-breeding could double the prediction accuracy of the benchmark. 3D-breeding could identify genotypes with enhanced local adaptation providing superior productive performance across seasons. We propose this decentralized approach to leverage the diversity in farmer fields and complement conventional plant breeding to enhance local adaptation in challenging crop production environments.publishedVersio

Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of WW bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at s=8\sqrt{s}=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents measurements of the $W^+ \rightarrow \mu^+\nu$ and $W^- \rightarrow \mu^-\nu$ cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the 1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables, submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13

Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30

Single hadron response measurement and calorimeter jet energy scale uncertainty with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The uncertainty on the calorimeter energy response to jets of particles is derived for the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). First, the calorimeter response to single isolated charged hadrons is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo simulation using proton-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies of sqrt(s) = 900 GeV and 7 TeV collected during 2009 and 2010. Then, using the decay of K_s and Lambda particles, the calorimeter response to specific types of particles (positively and negatively charged pions, protons, and anti-protons) is measured and compared to the Monte Carlo predictions. Finally, the jet energy scale uncertainty is determined by propagating the response uncertainty for single charged and neutral particles to jets. The response uncertainty is 2-5% for central isolated hadrons and 1-3% for the final calorimeter jet energy scale.Comment: 24 pages plus author list (36 pages total), 23 figures, 1 table, submitted to European Physical Journal