On the earliest printed portolano (Venice, 1490)

In November 1490, Bernardino Rizo da Novara issued the earliest printed anonymous portolano. Several months later, a print privilege was issued at the request of Andrea Badoer, a merchant. With the support of a newly published database of Venetian privileges, it is contended that Badoer sponsored the print and possibly provided the text of the portolano

The Sensoria Approach Applied to the Finance Case Study

This chapter provides an effective implementation of (part of) the Sensoria approach, specifically modelling and formal analysis of service-oriented software based on mathematically founded techniques. The ‘Finance case study’ is used as a test bed for demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the use of the process calculus COWS and some of its related analysis techniques and tools. In particular, we report the results of an application of a temporal logic and its model checker for expressing and checking functional properties of services and a type system for guaranteeing confidentiality properties of services

Inverse correlation between testosterone and ventricle ejection fraction, hemodynamics and exercise capacity in heart failure patients with erectile dysfunction

BACKGROUND: Neurohormonal activation and abnormalities in growth hormone and testosterone concentrations have been reported in heart failure (HF). Erectile dysfunction(ED) is common in these patients and contributes to a low quality of life. No data are known regarding the correlation between testosterone and hemodynamics, exercise capacity and cardiac function in HF patients with ED, a marker of endothelial dysfunction. The aim of this study was to correlate testosterone levels with cardiac function, hemodynamic and exercise capacity in HF patients with ED. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Fifteen HF patients underwent a six-minute treadmill cardiopulmonary walking test (6'CWT) and, ten minutes later, a maximum cardiopulmonary exercise test. Also, testosterone and other hormones were determined at rest. RESULTS: Among hemodynamic variables only diastolic blood pressure on 6'CWT was correlated with testosterone levels(r =- 0.66, p = 0.007). The variables on exercise tests, VE/VCO2 slope and oxygen consumption did not show any correlation, except the distance at 6'CWT (r = 0.50, p = 0,047). Right and left ventricle ejection fraction showed inverse correlation with testosterone (r =- 0.55, p = 0.03 and r =- 0.69, p = 0.004 respectively). CONCLUSION: Testosterone levels correlated directly with distance at six-minute cardiopulmonary walk test and inversely with diastolic blood pressure, right and left ventricle ejection fraction in heart failure patients with erectile dysfunction. Further elucidation of mechanisms as regards testosterone action in these patients is warranted

On the Behaviour of General-Purpose Applications on Cloud Storages

Managing data over cloud infrastructures raises novel challenges with respect to existing and well studied approaches such as ACID and long running transactions. One of the main requirements is to provide availability and partition tolerance in a scenario with replicas and distributed control. This comes at the price of a weaker consistency, usually called eventual consistency. These weak memory models have proved to be suitable in a number of scenarios, such as the analysis of large data with Map-Reduce. However, due to the widespread availability of cloud infrastructures, weak storages are used not only by specialised applications but also by general purpose applications. We provide a formal approach, based on process calculi, to reason about the behaviour of programs that rely on cloud stores. For instance, one can check that the composition of a process with a cloud store ensures `strong' properties through a wise usage of asynchronous message-passing

The Reversible Temporal Process Language

Reversible debuggers help programmers to quickly find the causes of misbehaviours in concurrent programs. These debuggers can be founded on the well-studied theory of causal-consistent reversibility, which allows one to undo any action provided that its consequences are undone beforehand. Till now, causal-consistent reversibility never considered time, a key aspect in real world applications. Here, we study the interplay between reversibility and time in concurrent systems via a process algebra. The Temporal Process Language (TPL) by Hennessy and Regan is a well-understood extension of CCS with discrete-time and a timeout operator. We define revTPL, a reversible extension of TPL, and we show that it satisfies the properties expected from a causal-consistent reversible calculus. We show that, alternatively, revTPL can be interpreted as an extension of reversible CCS with time

A model of actors and grey failures

Existing models for the analysis of concurrent processes tend to focus on fail-stop failures, where processes are either working or permanently stopped, and their state (working/stopped) is known. In fact, systems are often affected by grey failures: failures that are latent, possibly transient, and may affect the system in subtle ways that later lead to major issues (such as crashes, limited availability, overload). We introduce a model of actor-based systems with grey failures, based on two interlinked layers: an actor model, given as an asynchronous process calculus with discrete time, and a failure model that represents failure patterns to inject in the system. Our failure model captures not only fail-stop node and link failures, but also grey failures (e.g., partial, transient). We give a behavioural equivalence relation based on weak barbed bisimulation to compare systems on the basis of their ability to recover from failures, and on this basis we define some desirable properties of reliable systems. By doing so, we reduce the problem of checking reliability properties of systems to the problem of checking bisimulation

Timed Multiparty Session Types

We propose a typing theory, based on multiparty session types, for modular verification of real-time choreographic interactions. To model real-time implementations, we introduce a simple calculus with delays and a decidable static proof system. The proof system ensures type safety and time-error freedom, namely processes respect the prescribed timing and causalities between interactions. A decidable condition on timed global types guarantees time-progress for validated processes with delays, and gives a sound and complete characterisation of a new class of CTAs with general topologies that enjoys progress and liveness

Azolla-Anabaena as a Biofertilizer for rice paddy fields in the Po Valley, a temperate rice area in Northern Italy

Azolla is a floating pteridophyte, which contains as endosymbiont the nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium Anabaena azollae (Nostocaceae family). Widely cultivated in the Asian regions, Azolla is either incorporated into the soil before rice transplanting or grown as a dual crop along with rice. To examine the feasibility of its use in flooded rice fields sited in the Temperate European Areas, we carried out a series of experiments in PVC tanks during 2000–2002 in Po Valley (northern Italy) conditions, to study the growth-development dynamics and the resistance/tolerance to low temperatures and to commonly used herbicides of several different Azolla strains. Three out of five strains tested survived the winter, with an increase in biomass from March to May producing approximately 30–40 kg ha−1 of nitrogen. One of these strains, named “Milan”, emerged as the most resistant to herbicide and the most productive. Of the herbicides tested, Propanil permitted the survival of growing Azolla

Canopy Changes of Brachiaria Managed Under Continuous Stocking in the Dry-Water Transition

Pasture supplementation is an alternative to take advantage of the forage mass deferred in the rainy season and maintain or provide weight gain in periods of rain absence. The objective was to compare the structural characteristics, mass production, density and population dynamics of tillers of Urochloa brizantha cv. ‘Paiaguas’ and U. spp. cv. ‘Convert’ under fixed and continuous stocking with steers supplemented in the trough or on the ground in the water/dry transition period. The experiment was carried out at Jatai Federal University, from March to June, in a completely randomized design and a 2x2 factorial scheme, using six paddocks/treatment. The completely randomized design was adopted and variance analysis was performed with software SAS following the GLM procedure, were compared using repeated-measures. There was a significant interaction between Brachiaria and the method of supplementation for basal, aerial, and total tiller density. Convert had an average of 551 basal and 577 total tiller/m2. Paiaguas grass presented higher tiller density (1,03 vs. 582 tiller/m2) and higher tiller birth rate (12.92 vs. 9.14%) than Convert. No significant difference was observed between brachiarias. The average height of Paiaguas was 62.34 and 50.70 cm for Convert. The average height was 57.83 and on the ground it was 54.90 cm. Supplementation offer method changed Paiaguas canopy. The Convert showed higher leaf and dead mass production but lower weeds despite its smaller tillering

Canopy Changes of Brachiaria Managed Under Continuous Stocking in the Dry-Water Transition

Pasture supplementation is an alternative to take advantage of the forage mass deferred in the rainy season and maintain or provide weight gain in periods of rain absence. The objective was to compare the structural characteristics, mass production, density and population demography of tillers of Urochloa brizantha cv. Paiaguás and Urochloa spp. cv. Convert under fixed and continuous stocking with steers supplemented with pelleted concentrate supplied in the trough or on the ground in the water/dry transition period. The experiment was carried out in the Jatai Federal University, from March to June 2020, in a completely randomized design and a 2 x 2 factorial scheme, using six paddocks/treatment. SAS was used considering repeated measures (RM) at 5% to do variance analysis. There was a significant interaction between Brachiaria and the method of supplementation for basal tiller, aerial and total tiller density. Convert-grass had an average of 551 basal and 577 total tiller/m2. Paiaguas grass presented higher tiller density (1,028 vs. 582 tiller/m2) and higher tiller birth rate (12.92 vs. 9.14%) than Convert. No significant difference was observed between the brachiarias. The average height of Paiaguas-grass was 62.34 cm and 50.70 cm for Convert-grass. The average height was 57.83 cm and on the ground it was 54.90 cm. Supplementation offer method changed Paiaguas canopy. The Convert showed higher leaf and dead mass production but lower weeds despite its smaller tillering