Decision-making for unmanned aerial vehicle operation in icing conditions

With the increased use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for civil and commercial applications, there is a strong demand for new regulations and technology that will eventually permit for the integration of UAS in unsegregated airspace. This requires new technology to ensure sufficient safety and a smooth integration process. The absence of a pilot on board a vehicle introduces new problems that do not arise in manned flight. One challenging and safety-critical issue is flight in known icing conditions. Whereas in manned flight, dealing with icing is left to the pilot and his appraisal of the situation at hand; in unmanned flight, this is no longer an option and new solutions are required. To address this, an icing-related decision-making system (IRDMS) is proposed. The system quantifies in-flight icing based on changes in aircraft performance and measurements of environmental properties, and evaluates what the effects on the aircraft are. Based on this, it determines whether the aircraft can proceed, and whether and which available icing protection systems should be activated. In this way, advice on an appropriate response is given to the operator on the ground, to ensure safe continuation of the flight and avoid possible accidents

drag forces in statistically stationary and homogeneous submerged granular flows

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Challenges in control and autonomy of unmanned aerial-aquatic vehicles

Autonomous aquatic vehicles capable of flight can deploy more rapidly, access remote or constricted areas, overfly obstacles and transition easily between distinct bodies of water. This new class of vehicles can be referred as Unmanned Aerial-Aquatic Vehicles (UAAVs), and is capable of reaching distant locations rapidly, conducting measurements and returning to base. This greatly improves upon current solutions, which often involve integrating different types of vehicles (e.g. vessels releasing underwater vehicles), or rely on manpower (e.g. sensors dropped manually from ships). Thanks to recent research efforts, UAAVs are becoming more sophisticated and robust. Nonetheless numerous challenges remain to be addressed, and particularly dedicated control and sensing solutions are still scarce. This paper discusses challenges and opportunities in UAAV control, sensing and actuation. Following a brief overview of the state of the art, we elaborate on the requirements and challenges for the main types of robots and missions proposed in the literature to date, and highlight existing solutions where available. The concise but wide-ranging overview provided will constitute a useful starting point for researchers undertaking UAAV control work

A comparison of small rodent assemblages after a 20 year interval in the Alps

Human-induced environmental alterations in the Alps may importantly affect small mammal species, but evidence in this sense is limited. We live-trapped small rodents in the Central-Eastern Italian Alps in three close-by habitat types (rocky scree, alpine grassland, and heath) at 2100 m a.s.l. during summer-fall, in 1997 and 2016. We compared small rodent assemblages through a Redundancy Detrended Analysis (RDA). In both surveys, we detected two specialist species, i.e., the common vole (Microtus arvalis) and the snow vole (Chionomys nivalis), and, unexpectedly, the forest generalist bank vole (Myodes glareolus). In 1997, grassland was mainly occupied by the common vole, while the bank vole and the snow vole were sympatric in the other habitats. In 2016, the snow vole was detected only in the scree, while other species did not show distribution changes. We discuss a series of hypotheses that might have driven the differences observed across decades, among which is a species-specific response to abiotic and biotic environmental alterations, with the alpine habitat specialist moving out of sub-optimal habitats. We encourage further research on this topic, e.g., via long-term longitudinal studies

Anticancer Effects of Wild Mountain Mentha longifolia Extract in Adrenocortical Tumor Cell Models

Mint [Mentha longifolia (L.) Hudson] is an aromatic plant that belongs to Lamiaceae family. It is traditionally used as herbal tea in Europe, Australia and North Africa and shows numerous pharmacological effects, such as spasmolytic, antioxidant, antimicrobial and anti-hemolytic. Recently, its antiproliferative role has been suggested in a small number of tumor cell models, but no data are available on adrenocortical carcinoma, a malignancy with a survival rate at 5 years of 20%\u201330% which frequently metastasize. This work aimed to study the effects of Mentha longifolia L. crude extract (ME) on two adrenocortical tumor cell models (H295R and SW13 cells). Chemical composition of ME was assessed by gas-chromatography/mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy analysis. Brine shrimp lethality assay showed ME effects at >0.5 \ub5g/\ub5l (p 0.5 \ub5g/\ub5l, p 0.5 \ub5g/\ub5l, p < 0.05), while Wright staining demonstrated the presence of both necrotic and apoptotic cells. Cell cycle analysis showed a strong increase in subG0/G1 phase, related to cell death. Furthermore, MAPK and PI3k/Akt pathways were modulated by Western blot analysis when treating cells with ME alone or combined with mitotane. The crude methanolic extract of wild mountain mint can decrease cell viability, vitality and survival of adrenocortical tumor cell models, in particular of SW13 cells. These data show the potential anticancer effects of ME, still more work is needed to corroborate these findings

Analysis of 1321 Eubacterium rectale genomes from metagenomes uncovers complex phylogeographic population structure and subspecies functional adaptations

Funding This work was supported by NIH NHGRI grant R01HG005220, NIDDK grant R24DK110499, NIDDK grant U54DE023798, and CMIT grant 6935956 to C.H., and by the European Research Council (ERC-STG project MetaPG-716575), MIUR “Futuro in Ricerca” RBFR13EWWI_001, the European Union (H2020-SFS-2018-1 project MASTER-818368 and H2020-SC1-BHC project ONCOBIOME-825410), and the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (1U01CA230551) to N.S. Further support was provided by the Programma Ricerca Budget prestazioni Eurac 2017 of the Province of Bolzano, Italy to F.M., and by the EU-H2020 (DiMeTrack-707345) to E.P. and N.S. D.B., S.H.D., P.L., A.W.W. and The Rowett Institute received core funding support from the Scottish Government Rural and Environmental Sciences and Analytical Services (SG-RESAS). Availability of data and materials All datasets used in this study are publicly available and matched with their respective PMID (Additional file 5). The high-quality E. rectale MAGs in fasta format and a metadata file are available at http://segatalab.cibio.unitn.it/data/Erectale_Karcher_et_al.html and in the following Zenodo repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3763191 [80]. The two new isolate genomes L2–21 and T3BWe13 have been uploaded to NCBI and can be found in RefSeq under the accession numbers GCF_008122485.1 [81] and GCF_008123415.1 [82], respectively.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Decreased hydrocortisone sensitivity of T cell function in multiple sclerosis-associated major depression

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory, demyelinating disease of the CNS with a high prevalence of depression. Both MS and depression have been linked to elevated cortisol levels and inflammation, indicating disturbed endocrine-immune regulation. An imbalance in mineralocorticoid versus glucocorticoid signaling in the CNS has been proposed as a pathogenetic mechanism of depression. Intriguingly, both receptors are also expressed in lymphocytes, but their role for ‘escape’ of the immune system from endocrine control is unknown. Using steroid sensitivity of T cell function as a read-out system, we here investigate a potential role of mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) versus glucocorticoid receptor (GR) regulation in the immune system as a biological mechanism underlying MS-associated major depression. Twelve female MS patients meeting diagnostic criteria for current major depressive disorder (MDD) were compared to twelve carefully matched MS patients without depression. We performed lymphocyte phenotyping by flow cytometry. In addition, steroid sensitivity of T cell proliferation was tested using hydrocortisone as well as MR (aldosterone) and GR (dexamethasone) agonists. Sensitivity to hydrocortisone was decreased in T cells from depressed MS patients. Experiments with agonists suggested disturbed MR regulation, but intact GR function. Importantly, there were no differences in lymphocyte composition and frequency of T cell subsets, indicating that the differences in steroid sensitivity are unlikely to be secondary to shifts in the immune compartment. To our knowledge, this study provides first evidence for altered steroid sensitivity of T cells from MS patients with comorbid MDD possibly due to MR dysregulation

Efficient numerical computation and experimental study of temporally long equilibrium scour development around abutment

YesFor the abutment bed scour to reach its equilibrium state, a long flow time is needed. Hence, the employment of usual strategy of simulating such scouring event using the 3D numerical model is very time consuming and less practical. In order to develop an applicable model to consider temporally long abutment scouring process, this study modifies the common approach of 2D shallow water equations (SWEs) model to account for the sediment transport and turbulence, and provides a realistic approach to simulate the long scouring process to reach the full scour equilibrium. Due to the high demand of the 2D SWEs numerical scheme performance to simulate the abutment bed scouring, a recently proposed surface gradient upwind method (SGUM) was also used to improve the simulation of the numerical source terms. The abutment scour experiments of this study were conducted using the facility of Hydraulics Laboratory at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore to compare with the presented 2D SGUM-SWEs model. Fifteen experiments were conducted over a total period of 3059.7 hours experimental time (over 4.2 months). The comparison shows that the 2D SGUM-SWEs model gives good representation to the experimental results with the practical advantage

Using PIV to measure granular temperature in saturated unsteady polydisperse granular flows

The motion of debris flows, gravity-driven fast moving mixtures of rock, soil and water can be interpreted using the theories developed to describe the shearing motion of highly concentrated granular fluid flows. Frictional, collisional and viscous stress transfer between particles and fluid characterizes the mechanics of debris flows. To quantify the influence of collisional stress transfer, kinetic models have been proposed. Collisions among particles result in random fluctuations in their velocity that can be represented by their granular temperature, T. In this paper particle image velocimetry, PIV, is used to measure the instantaneous velocity field found internally to a physical model of an unsteady debris flow created by using “transparent soil”—i.e. a mixture of graded glass particles and a refractively matched fluid. The ensemble possesses bulk properties similar to that of real soil-pore fluid mixtures, but has the advantage of giving optical access to the interior of the flow by use of plane laser induced fluorescence, PLIF. The relationship between PIV patch size and particle size distribution for the front and tail of the flows is examined in order to assess their influences on the measured granular temperature of the system. We find that while PIV can be used to ascertain values of granular temperature in dense granular flows, due to increasing spatial correlation with widening gradation, a technique proposed to infer the true granular temperature may be limited to flows of relatively uniform particle size or large bulk