The dynamics of consensus in group decision making: investigating the pairwise interactions between fuzzy preferences.

In this paper we present an overview of the soft consensus model in group decision making and we investigate the dynamical patterns generated by the fundamental pairwise preference interactions on which the model is based. The dynamical mechanism of the soft consensus model is driven by the minimization of a cost function combining a collective measure of dissensus with an individual mechanism of opinion changing aversion. The dissensus measure plays a key role in the model and induces a network of pairwise interactions between the individual preferences. The structure of fuzzy relations is present at both the individual and the collective levels of description of the soft consensus model: pairwise preference intensities between alternatives at the individual level, and pairwise interaction coefficients between decision makers at the collective level. The collective measure of dissensus is based on non linear scaling functions of the linguistic quantifier type and expresses the degree to which most of the decision makers disagree with respect to their preferences regarding the most relevant alternatives. The graded notion of consensus underlying the dissensus measure is central to the dynamical unfolding of the model. The original formulation of the soft consensus model in terms of standard numerical preferences has been recently extended in order to allow decision makers to express their preferences by means of triangular fuzzy numbers. An appropriate notion of distance between triangular fuzzy numbers has been chosen for the construction of the collective dissensus measure. In the extended formulation of the soft consensus model the extra degrees of freedom associated with the triangular fuzzy preferences, combined with non linear nature of the pairwise preference interactions, generate various interesting and suggestive dynamical patterns. In the present paper we investigate these dynamical patterns which are illustrated by means of a number of computer simulations.

Low-cost and distributed health monitoring system for critical buildings

In this paper we present a low-cost distributed embedded system for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) that uses very cost-effective MEMS accelerometers, instead of more expensive piezoelectric analog transducers. The proposed platform provides online filtering and fusion of the collected data directly on-board. Data are transmitted after processing using a WiFi transceiver. Low-cost and synchronized devices permit to have more fine-grained measurements and a comprehensive assessment of the whole building, by evaluating their response to vibrations. The challenge addressed in this paper is to execute a quite computationally-demanding digital filtering on a low-cost microcontroller STM32, and to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio typical of MEMS devices with a spatial redundancy of the sensors. Our work poses the basis for low-cost methods for elaborating complex modal analysis of buildings and structures

Cluster-based Vibration Analysis of Structures with GSP

This article describes a divide-and-conquer strategy suited for vibration monitoring applications. Based on a low-cost embedded network of microelectromechanical accelerometers, the proposed architecture strives to reduce both power consumption and computational resources. Moreover, it eases the sensor deployment on large structures by exploiting a novel clustering scheme, which consists of unconventional and nonoverlapped sensing configurations. Signal processing techniques for inter- and intracluster data assembly are introduced to allow for a fullscale assessment of the structural integrity. More specifically, the capability of graph signal processing is adopted for the first time in vibration-based monitoring scenarios to capture the spatial relationship between acceleration data. The experimental validation, conducted on a steel beam perturbed with additive mass, reveals high accuracy in damage detection tasks. Deviations in spectral content and mode shape envelopes are correctly revealed regardless of environmental factors and operational uncertainties. Furthermore, an additional key advantage of the implemented architecture relies on its compliance with blind modal investigations, an approach that favors the implementation of autonomous smart monitoring systems

Long-range Radio for Underground Sensors in Geothermal Energy Systems

The paper presents the design of a temperature monitoring system in a very harsh environment, such as Shallow Geothermal Systems (SGS), where the information of underground temperature is necessary to assess the thermal potential of the soil, for maximizing the efficiency of the SGS. The challenge is to get information at different depths (sometimes up to - 100m), to transmit data wirelessly in rural areas where conventional wireless connections (e.g. WiFi, GSM) are not guaranteed and energy availability poses severe limits. Our design exploits a recent new modulation protocol developed for long-range transmission, at the minimum energy cost, and a two-tier hardware architecture for measuring underground temperature. Aggressive duty cycling permits to achieve lifetime of several years. Experimental results demonstrate the utility of such a system during the design and the operational activity of a SGS

Cardiovascular effects of antimuscarinic agents and beta3-adrenergic receptor agonist for the treatment of overactive bladder

Overactive bladder (OAB) syndrome is common in the general population, particularly in elderly patients. Antimuscarinic drugs (AMs) are considered the mainstay pharmaceutical treatment of OAB whereas \u3b23-adrenoceptor agonists, such as mirabegron, represent a good alternative. Owing to the important role of muscarinic and \u3b23 receptors in cardiovascular (CV) tissue and to the fact that OAB patients often have CV comorbidities, the safety-profile of these drugs constitute an important challenge. Area covered: The aim of this review is to evaluate the CV effects of AMs and mirabegron in OAB. A systematic literature search from inception until December 2017 was performed on PubMed and Medline. Expert opinion: AMs are generally considered to have good CV safety profile but, however, they may cause undesirable adverse events, such as dry mouth, constipation. CV AEs are rare but noteworthy, the most common CV consequences related to the use of these drugs are constituted by an increase in HR and QT interval. Mirabegron has similar efficacy and tolerability to AMs but causes less adverse events, with either modest hypertension and modest increase in HR (<5 bpm) being the most commonly reported

Hibernus++: a self-calibrating and adaptive system for transiently-powered embedded devices

Energy harvesters are being used to power autonomous systems, but their output power is variable and intermittent. To sustain computation, these systems integrate batteries or supercapacitors to smooth out rapid changes in harvester output. Energy storage devices require time for charging and increase the size, mass and cost of systems. The field of transient computing moves away from this approach, by powering the system directly from the harvester output. To prevent an application from having to restart computation after a power outage, approaches such as Hibernus allow these systems to hibernate when supply failure is imminent. When the supply reaches the operating threshold, the last saved state is restored and the operation is continued from the point it was interrupted. This work proposes Hibernus++ to intelligently adapt the hibernate and restore thresholds in response to source dynamics and system load properties. Specifically, capabilities are built into the system to autonomously characterize the hardware platform and its performance during hibernation in order to set the hibernation threshold at a point which minimizes wasted energy and maximizes computation time. Similarly, the system auto-calibrates the restore threshold depending on the balance of energy supply and consumption in order to maximize computation time. Hibernus++ is validated both theoretically and experimentally on microcontroller hardware using both synthesized and real energy harvesters. Results show that Hibernus++ provides an average 16% reduction in energy consumption and an improvement of 17% in application execution time over stateof- the-art approaches

PD-L1 expression heterogeneity in non-small cell lung cancer: Evaluation of small biopsies reliability

Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors, allowing recovery of effector cells function, has demonstrated to be highly effective in many tumor types and represents a true revolution in oncology. Recently, the anti-PD1 agent pembrolizumab was granted FDA approval for the first line treatment of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) whose tumors show PD-L1 expression in \ue2\u89\ua5 50% of neoplastic cells and as a second line treatment for patients with NSCLC expressing PD-L1 in \ue2\u89\ua51% of neoplastic cells, evaluated with a validated assay. For the large majority of patients such evaluation is made on small biopsies. However, small tissue samples such as core biopsies might not be representative of tumors and may show divergent results given the possible heterogeneous immunoexpression of the biomarker. We therefore sought to evaluate PD-L1 expression concordance in a cohort of 239 patients using tissue microarrays (TMA) as surrogates of biopsies stained with a validated PD-L1 immunohistochemical assay (SP263) and report the degree of discordance among tissue cores in order to understand how such heterogeneity could affect decisions regarding therapy. We observed a discordance rate of 20% and 7.9% and a Cohen's \uce\uba value of 0.53 (moderate) and 0,48 (moderate) for \ue2\u89\ua5 1% and \ue2\u89\ua5 50% cutoffs, respectively. Our results suggest that caution must be taken when evaluating single biopsies from patients with advanced NSCLC eligible for immunotherapy; moreover, at least 4 biopsies are necessary in order to minimize the risk of tumor misclassification

SARS-CoV-2 transmission by asymptomatic healthcare workers positive to screening swab: an Italian study

Background SARS-CoV-2 spreads primarily through respiratory droplets of symptomatic individuals. With respect to asymptomatic individuals, there are conflicting results in the literature and a lack of studies specifically examining transmission in healthcare settings. Methods The aim of this retrospective study, conducted in a northeastern Italian region, was to estimate the contagiousness of asymptomatic healthcare workers (HCWs) who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Asymptomatic HCWs who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 by real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR) at a regular screening nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal swab between 1 February 2020 and 15 September 2020 were considered index cases. Contacts who were at high risk of infection and had follow-up swabs were included. Contacts were considered infected if they had a positive follow-up swab and/or symptoms associated with COVID-19 confirmed by a positive test within 14 days of exposure. Information was taken from records previously collected to identify contacts. Infectivity was estimated using the attack rate (AR) with a 95% confidence interval (95% CI). Results Thirty-eight asymptomatic HCWs who were positive at the screening swab and 778 contacts were identified. Contacts included 63.8% of colleagues, 25.6% of patients, 7.7% of family members and 3.0% of other contacts. Seven contacts tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 (AR: 0.91%, 95% CI: 0.89-0.93). Five of them were family members (AR: 8.3%), one was a colleague (0.2%) and one was a contact of other type (4.2%). Conclusions Viral spread by asymptomatic HCWs was less than in other settings. Identification of risk factors for transmission and reliable indicators of infectivity would be important to prioritize preventive measures

Short-scale variability of the SCLM beneath the extra-Andean back-arc (Paso de Indios, Argentina): Evidence from spinel-facies mantle xenoliths

Cenozoic basalts carrying ultramafic mantle xenoliths occur in the Matilde, León and Chenque hills in the Paso de Indios region, Argentina. The mantle xenoliths from the Chenque and León hills mainly present porphyroclastic textures, whereas the Matilde hill xenoliths have coarse-grained to porphyroclastic textures. The equilibrium temperatures are in the range of 780 to 940°C, indicating a provenance from shallow sectors of the lithospheric mantle column that were subjected to a relatively low heat flux at Cenozoic Era. According to the modal compositions of xenoliths, the mantle beneath Matilde and León hills was affected by greater than 22% partial melting, while less depleted peridotites occur in the Chenque suite (starting from 10% partial melting). Such an observation is con rmed by the partial melting estimates based on Cr#Sp, which vary from 8 to 14% for the selected Chenque samples and from 14 to 18% for the Matilde ones. The common melting trend is overlapped by small-scale cross cutting local trends that may have been generated by open-system processes, such as open-system partial melting and/or post partial-melting metasomatic migration of exotic Na-Cr-rich melts. The two main mineralogical reaction schemes are: i) the dissolution of pyroxenes and the segregation of new olivine in olivine-rich peridotites, and ii) the replacement of primary olivine by orthopyroxene±clinopyroxene in orthopyroxene-rich peridotites. These were produced by channelled and/or pervasive melt extraction/ migration. Enhanced pyroxene dissolution is attributed to channelling of silica- undersaturated melts, whereas the replacement of primary olivine by orthopyroxene±clinopyroxene points to reaction with silica-saturated melts. Late disequilibrium reactions identified in the xenoliths comprise: the breakdown of orthopyroxene in contact with the host basalt, and (rarely) reaction coronae on orthopyroxene, clinopyroxene and spinel linked to glassy veins. Such features are apparently related to the injection of melt, likely during entrainment into the host basalts and ascent to the surface.Centro de Investigaciones Geológica

A Força Aérea, Enquanto Agente de Protecção Civil, no Combate ao Terrorismo

Este estudo pretende determinar de que forma a Força Aérea Portuguesa (FAP), na sua condição de agente primário de proteção civil, poderá contribuir para a capacidade de resposta nacional perante ações terroristas com recurso a materiais nucleares, radiológicos, biológicos e químicos (NRBQ). Complementarmente será abordado o enquadramento doutrinário da defesa NRBQ (DNRBQ) na FAP e analisadas as suas capacidades reais de intervenção numa resposta a uma situação de terrorismo que envolva este tipo de produtos, relacionando-as com as competências dos outros agentes primários de proteção civil. Nesta perspetiva, aborda-se a estrutura de atuação implementada em alguns países europeus, que servirá como modelo de análise comparativa entre sistemas de resposta a incidentes desta natureza. Caracteriza-se o conceito de terrorismo associado a este tipo de dispositivos e as ações desenvolvidas por organizações internacionais, das quais Portugal é membro, objetivando a criação de mecanismos de resposta capazes de fazer face a este tipo de situações. Para procurar enquadrar a equipa que a FAP disponibiliza ao Estado-Maior General das Forças Armadas (EMGFA), apresenta-se a estrutura de DNRBQ e o modelo de organização da Equipa de Alerta NRBQ, entidade da FAP responsável pela atuação num cenário desta natureza, analisando o sistema nacional de proteção civil e traduzindo para a realidade nacional a capacidade de resposta que os agentes primários dispõem para atuarem em incidentes desta natureza. A forma como este objetivo é atingido é através da formulação de hipóteses que são sujeitas a validação, recorrendo a entrevistas, pesquisa bibliográfica e análise documental. Identifica-se a necessidade da criação de valências que cubram a DNRBQ, como garantia da segurança dos militares destacados em teatros de operações onde esta ameaça seja uma realidade, e adicionalmente a sua utilização pela Força Aérea, enquanto agente de proteção civil, no combate ao terrorismo. Identifica-se também a necessidade de reestruturar a diretiva que regula a DNRBQ, no sentido de a operacionalizar face à realidade da FAP e de traduzir a doutrina a ser adotada. Conclui-se que a DNRBQ deverá ser caracterizada por uma estrutura simples, centralizada num único local, que envolva as áreas operacional e de instrução, constituída por pequenas equipas especializadas que assegurem todas as componentes e, desta forma contribuam para a missão da FAP. No final deste estudo apresentam-se algumas recomendações que poderão contribuir para a reflexão sobre a utilidade das conclusões. Abstract: This study aims to determine how the Portuguese Air Force (PRTAF), in its capability as initial reaction element, may contribute to the national response capability in case of terrorist acts using chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) devices. In addition, the framework of the PRTAF guidelines for CBRN defence is evaluated and the actual response to terrorism acts involving such kind of materials is analyzed, linking them with the skills of the other elements. In this perspective, the response structure implemented in some European countries is discussed to serve as a model for a comparative analysis of the response systems to such incidents. The terrorism concept associated with such devices and the actions taken by the international organizations of which Portugal is a member are characterized aiming the creation of response mechanisms able to cope with such incidents. In order to frame the PRTAF CBRN Response Team available to the Armed Forces General Staff (EMGFA), the CBRN defence structure and the CBRN Response Team organization are presented. The national civil protection system is also considered and the first response capability to act in such incidents is also considered, bearing in mind the national reality. In this work, the hypotheses created were validated using interviews, literature research and document analysis. It is undeniable that there is a need for the CBRN defence capability in the PRTAF to ensure the safety of the troops which are deployed to areas of operations where this threat is a reality. In addition, this capability may be used to combat terrorism in the homeland. There is, also, a need to restructure the FAP CBRN defence directive in order to adjust it to nowadays situations and a need to translate the doctrine to be adopted. As a conclusion, the CBRN defence should be characterised by a simple structure, centralized in one place, involving operational and educational areas, consisting of small specialized teams that will ensure all components and thus contribute to the PRTAF’s main mission. At the end of the present study, there are some recommendations that may contribute to the debate on the usefulness of the findings