Potenzialità e problematiche della CFD nel valutare le forze agenti in galleria del vento su una vettura GT

La simulazione numerica è una metodologia di risoluzione dei problemi fluidodinamici di interesse ingegneristico che negli ultimi anni ha avuto un utilizzo e uno sviluppo sempre crescente. Nell'ambito di un mercato sempre più concorrenziale un aspetto cruciale è rappresentato dalla riduzione dei tempi della progettazione nello sviluppo di un nuovo prodotto. La procedura sperimentale può risultare troppo lunga, in quanto complessa, e costosa. La CFD permette, in tempi relativamente brevi, di eseguire valutazioni estremamente rapide e semplici una volta ottenuta la risoluzione del flusso, avendo a disposizione il valore delle variabili fluidodinamiche in tutto il campo. Un ulteriore vantaggio della CFD è quello di poter comparare un numero elevato di configurazioni permettendo di individuare la migliore.. Le simulazioni numeriche sono infatti caratterizzate da un errore bias che può essere anche rilevante, ma al contempo da un errore random praticamnente nullo. In sostanza non necessariamente si riesce a valutare con esattezza il valore secco di una certa variabile (velocità, pressione), ma la stima delle differenze risulta molto accurata. Quest'ultimo è un aspetto cruciale alla base del presente lavoro di tesi: risolvendo il problema aerodinamico di una vettura in aria libera e del suo modello in galleria è possibile implementare una procedura per la correzione dei dati ottenuti dalla sperimentazione

A high speed oscillator-based truly random number source for cryptographic applications on a Smart Card IC

Special Issue on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded System

Prevalence of children witnessed violence in a pediatric emergency department

Witnessed violence is a form of child abuse with detrimental effects on child wellbeing and development, whose recognition relies on the assessment of their mother exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV). The aim of this study was to assess the frequency of witnessed violence in a population of children attending a pediatric emergency department (ED) in Italy, by searching for IPV in their mother, and to define the characteristics of the mother-child dyads. An observational cross-sectional study was conducted from February 2020 to January 2021. Participating mothers were provided a questionnaire, which included the Woman Abuse Screening Tool (WAST) and additional questions about their baseline data and health. Descriptive analysis was reported as frequency and percentage for the categorical variables and median and interquartile range (IQR) for quantitative variables. Mothers and children screened positive and negative for IPV and witnessed violence, respectively, were compared by the chi-square test or the exact Fisher test for categorical variables, and by the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test for continuous variables. Out of 212 participating mothers, ninety-three (43.9%) displayed a positive WAST. Mothers tested positive were mainly Italian (71%, p 0.003), had a lower level of education (median age at school dropout 19, p 0.0002), and a higher frequency of unemployment (p 0.001) and poor personal health status (8.6%, p 0.001). The children of mothers tested positive showed a higher occurrence of abnormal psychological-emotional state (38.7%, p 0.002) and sleep disturbances (26.9%, p 0.04)

New black holes in the brane-world?

It is known that the Einstein field equations in five dimensions admit more general spherically symmetric black holes on the brane than four-dimensional general relativity. We propose two families of analytic solutions (with g_tt\not=-1/g_rr), parameterized by the ADM mass and the PPN parameter beta, which reduce to Schwarzschild for beta=1. Agreement with observations requires |\beta-1| |\eta|<<1. The sign of eta plays a key role in the global causal structure, separating metrics which behave like Schwarzschild (eta<0) from those similar to Reissner-Nordstroem (eta>0). In the latter case, we find a family of black hole space-times completely regular.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX, 3 eps figures, final version to appear in Phys. Rev.

Different Cyberbullying Experiences and Sensemaking Processes about the Sociocultural Context

Introduction: Cyberbullying represents one of the main current concerns of parents, educators and clinicians on youth. It consists of aggressive, offensive and injurious behaviors against a person by means of electronic device and sharing abusive content on the web. Previous studies have highlighted that cyberbullying is associated with individual factors, such as personality traits, age, sex and status, often disregarding the value attributed to one's own context of life. According to the Semiotic Dynamic Cultural Psychology Theory (SDPCT), the cultural context can be conceived as a net of interconnected trajectories of meanings, grounding the way of perceiving and experiencing a social environment, and enabling individuals to orient themselves in their material and social world. Aims: The present research aims to explore the relation between directly acted, suffered and indirectly observed behaviors of cyberbullying, the fear to be victim, the awareness of its harmfulness and sensemaking processes of one’s own context. Method: Six hundred twenty-four high school students (Mean AGE = 16.10; SD = 1.60) participated in this study. Participants filled in a questionnaire, consisting of two parts. The former was composed by six scales constructed ad hoc to explore the experience of acted, suffered and observed cyberbullying, the fear of being cyberbullied and the awareness of cyberbullying’s harmfulness. The latter the View of Context (VOC) questionnaire was used to map sensemaking processes through which people interpret their social context. Findings: Results shows significant associations between acted and suffered forms of cyberbullying, between fear of cyberbullying and the awareness of its harmfulness. The acted cyberbullying and suffered cyberbullying are both associated with representation of the context as devaluated (family, schools, social institutions are considered not welcoming, useful or reliable) and deprived of opportunities for the future. Conclusion: On clinical plan, the study suggests the importance of considering the relationships between bullying experienced and acted upon, as well as the role of meaning-making processes in understanding phenomena of social prevarication

T1 Bladder Cancer: Comparison of the Prognostic Impact of Two Substaging Systems on Disease Recurrence and Progression and Suggestion of a Novel Nomogram

Background: The T1 substaging of bladder cancer (BCa) potentially impacts disease progression. The objective of the study was to compare the prognostic accuracy of two substaging systems on the recurrence and progression of primary pathologic T1 (pT1) BCa and to test a nomogram based on pT1 substaging for predicting recurrence-free survival (RFS) and progression-free survival (PFS).Methods: The medical records of 204 patients affected by pT1 BCa were retrospectively reviewed. Substaging was defined according to the depth of lamina propria invasion in T1(a-c) and the extension of the lamina propria invasion to T1-microinvasive (T1(m)) or T1-extensive (T1(e)). Uni- and multivariable Cox regression models evaluated the independent variables correlated with recurrence and progression. The predictive accuracies of the two substaging systems were compared by Harrell's C index. Multivariate Cox regression models for the RFS and PFS were also depicted by a nomogram.Results: The 5-year RFS was 47.5% with a significant difference between T1(c) and T1(a) (p = 0.02) and between T1(e) and T1(m) (p &lt; 0.001). The 5-year PFS was 75.9% with a significant difference between T1(c) and T1(a) (p = 0.011) and between T1(e) and T1(m) (p &lt; 0.001). Model T1(m-e) showed a higher predictive power than T1(a-c) for predicting RFS and PFS. In the univariate and multivariate model subcategory T1e, the diameter, location, and number of tumors were confirmed as factors influencing recurrence and progression after adjusting for the other variables. The nomogram incorporating the T1(m-e) model showed a satisfactory agreement between model predictions at 5 years and actual observations.Conclusions: Substaging is significantly associated with RFS and PFS for patients affected by T1 BCa and should be included in innovative prognostic nomograms

Molecular and Functional Characterization of Three Different Postzygotic Mutations in PIK3CA-Related Overgrowth Spectrum (PROS) Patients: Effects on PI3K/AKT/mTOR Signaling and Sensitivity to PIK3 Inhibitors

BACKGROUND PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum (PROS) include a group of disorders that affect only the terminal portion of a limb, such as type I macrodactyly, and conditions like fibroadipose overgrowth (FAO), megalencephaly-capillary malformation (MCAP) syndrome, congenital lipomatous asymmetric overgrowth of the trunk, lymphatic, capillary, venous, and combined-type vascular malformations, epidermal nevi, skeletal and spinal anomalies (CLOVES) syndrome and Hemihyperplasia Multiple Lipomatosis (HHML). Heterozygous postzygotic PIK3CA mutations are frequently identified in these syndromes, while timing and tissue specificity of the mutational event are likely responsible for the extreme phenotypic variability observed. METHODS: We carried out a combination of Sanger sequencing and targeted deep sequencing of genes involved in the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway in three patients (1 MCAP and 2 FAO) to identify causative mutations, and performed immunoblot analyses to assay the phosphorylation status of AKT and P70S6K in affected dermal fibroblasts. In addition, we evaluated their ability to grow in the absence of serum and their response to the PI3K inhibitors wortmannin and LY294002 in vitro. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Our data indicate that patients' cells showed constitutive activation of the PI3K/Akt pathway. Of note, PI3K pharmacological blockade resulted in a significant reduction of the proliferation rate in culture, suggesting that inhibition of PI3K might prove beneficial in future therapies for PROS patients

ASTRI Mini-Array Data Model Document

This document provides an overview of the data products of the ASTRI MA System, and their conceptual (and logical) data models. The goals are: - list the data products produced by the MA system and the related data product categories; - show the relationship between the data products; - define a short identifier for the data product; - refer to data streams in architectural diagrams without ambiguity; - define interfaces and data models

Fermi Large Area Telescope Constraints on the Gamma-ray Opacity of the Universe

The Extragalactic Background Light (EBL) includes photons with wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, which are effective at attenuating gamma rays with energy above ~10 GeV during propagation from sources at cosmological distances. This results in a redshift- and energy-dependent attenuation of the gamma-ray flux of extragalactic sources such as blazars and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). The Large Area Telescope onboard Fermi detects a sample of gamma-ray blazars with redshift up to z~3, and GRBs with redshift up to z~4.3. Using photons above 10 GeV collected by Fermi over more than one year of observations for these sources, we investigate the effect of gamma-ray flux attenuation by the EBL. We place upper limits on the gamma-ray opacity of the Universe at various energies and redshifts, and compare this with predictions from well-known EBL models. We find that an EBL intensity in the optical-ultraviolet wavelengths as great as predicted by the "baseline" model of Stecker et al. (2006) can be ruled out with high confidence.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figures, accepted version (24 Aug.2010) for publication in ApJ; Contact authors: A. Bouvier, A. Chen, S. Raino, S. Razzaque, A. Reimer, L.C. Reye

ASTRI Mini-Array Top Level Software Architecture

This document provides a comprehensive architectural overview of the ASTRI Mini-Array Software system (a.k.a MA Software or MA Software System), which manages observing projects, observation handling, array control and monitoring, data acquisition, archiving, processing and simulations of the Cherenkov and Intensity Interferometry observations, including science tools for the scientific exploitation of the ASTRI MA data. This document, using a number of different views, depicts different aspects of the Mini-Array software and describes the significant architectural decisions