45 research outputs found

    Diagnóstico da cobertura vegetal no meio urbano em Campinas.

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    O objetivo deste estudo foi diagnosticar a cobertura vegetal da área urbana de Campinas por meio da análise da cobertura do solo urbano. Para isso, foram analisadas imagens de Campinas adquiridas pelo satélite WorldView 2 no ano de 2012

    Flexible Micropost Arrays for Shear Stress Measurement

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    Increased fuel costs, heightened environmental protection requirements, and noise abatement continue to place drag reduction at the forefront of aerospace research priorities. Unfortunately, shortfalls still exist in the fundamental understanding of boundary-layer airflow over aerodynamic surfaces, especially regarding drag arising from skin friction. For example, there is insufficient availability of instrumentation to adequately characterize complex flows with strong pressure gradients, heat transfer, wall mass flux, three-dimensionality, separation, shock waves, and transient phenomena. One example is the acoustic liner efficacy on aircraft engine nacelle walls. Active measurement of shear stress in boundary layer airflow would enable a better understanding of how aircraft structure and flight dynamics affect skin friction. Current shear stress measurement techniques suffer from reliability, complexity, and airflow disruption, thereby compromising resultant shear stress data. The state-of-the-art for shear stress sensing uses indirect or direct measurement techniques. Indirect measurements (e.g., hot-wire, heat flux gages, oil interferometry, laser Doppler anemometry, small scale pressure drag surfaces, i.e., fences) require intricate knowledge of the studied flow, restrictive instrument arrangements, large surface areas, flow disruption, or seeding material; with smaller, higher bandwidth probes under development. Direct measurements involve strain displacement of a sensor element and require no prior knowledge of the flow. Unfortunately, conventional "floating" recessed components for direct measurements are mm to cm in size. Whispering gallery mode devices and Fiber Bragg Gratings are examples of recent additions to this type of sensor with much smaller (m) sensor components. Direct detection techniques are often single point measurements and difficult to calibrate and implement in wind tunnel experiments. In addition, the wiring, packaging, and installation of delicate micro-electromechanical devices impede the use of most direct shear sensors. Similarly, the cavity required for sensing element displacement is sensitive to particulate obstruction. This work was focused on developing a shear stress sensor for use in subsonic wind tunnel test facilities applicable to an array of test configurations. The non-displacement shear sensors described here have minimal packaging requirements resulting in minimal or no disturbance of boundary layer flow. Compared to previous concepts, device installation could be simple with reduced cost and down-time. The novelty lies in the creation of low profile (nanoscale to 100 m) micropost arrays that stay within the viscous sub-layer of the airflow. Aerodynamic forces, which are related to the surface shear stress, cause post deflection and optical property changes. Ultimately, a reliable, accurate shear stress sensor that does not disrupt the airflow has the potential to provide high value data for flow physics researchers, aerodynamicists, and aircraft manufacturers leading to greater flight efficiency arising from more in-depth knowledge on how aircraft design impacts near surface properties

    PSY17 PRECISE STUDY: BASELINE ANALYSIS OF A COST EFFECTIVENESS STUDY ON FAILED BACK SURGERY SYNDROME

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    Business analytics in industry 4.0: a systematic review

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    Recently, the term “Industry 4.0” has emerged to characterize several Information Technology and Communication (ICT) adoptions in production processes (e.g., Internet-of-Things, implementation of digital production support information technologies). Business Analytics is often used within the Industry 4.0, thus incorporating its data intelligence (e.g., statistical analysis, predictive modelling, optimization) expert system component. In this paper, we perform a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) on the usage of Business Analytics within the Industry 4.0 concept, covering a selection of 169 papers obtained from six major scientific publication sources from 2010 to March 2020. The selected papers were first classified in three major types, namely, Practical Application, Reviews and Framework Proposal. Then, we analysed with more detail the practical application studies which were further divided into three main categories of the Gartner analytical maturity model, Descriptive Analytics, Predictive Analytics and Prescriptive Analytics. In particular, we characterized the distinct analytics studies in terms of the industry application and data context used, impact (in terms of their Technology Readiness Level) and selected data modelling method. Our SLR analysis provides a mapping of how data-based Industry 4.0 expert systems are currently used, disclosing also research gaps and future research opportunities.The work of P. Cortez was supported by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020. We would like to thank to the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions

    CSF levels of cyclic nucleotides in primary intracranial neoplasms: a preliminary report

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    Recent evidence indicates that cyclic nucleotides are of importance for general and neurosurgical oncology, especially with respect to the contact-inhibition mechanisms and tumour cell growth. This preliminary report deals with the CSF levels of c-AMP and c-GMP in primary neoplasms in children and to problems related to the blood-brain barrier. Some cases of medulloblastoma were studied as well as a few cases of brain stem glioma and cystic astrocytoma. The importance of some rather unusual findings seems undebatable, i.e., the marked increase in c-GMP values usually observed in medulloblastoma and the decrease of c-AMP, that is fairly common in all malignant neoplasms. The main changes in the c-AMP/c-GMP ratio are also discussed

    Uncovering disability-free grandparenthood in Italy between 1998 and 2016 using gender-specific decomposition

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    BACKGROUND Decreasing fertility rates and increasing lifespan affect the time grandparents and grandchildren co-exist. Any changes in the time and length of grandparenthood could alter the quality and the direction of intergenerational exchange. In Italy, a country in which grandparents constitute a fundamental resource for the provision of childcare and where families are the main source of support for individuals, studying grandparents' health evolution is crucial, especially considering the limited evidence available. OBJECTIVE This study aims to uncover the evolution of disability-free grandparenthood at age 65 between 1998 and 2016 in Italy, analysing changes due to the longevity revolution and to grandparenthood-disability prevalence, with a focus on gender differences. METHODS Disability-free grandparenthood is estimated for Italy for the years 1998 to 2016 and by gender using the Sullivan method. The linear integral decomposition method is implemented to assess the contribution of changes in mortality and the grandparenthood- disability prevalence on the evolution of disability-free grandparenthood over time. RESULTS Between 1998 and 2016, Italian grandparents gained disability-free years of life overlapping with their grandchildren. Grandmothers gained 2.6 years (from 9.9 to 12.5 years), and grandfathers 1.8 years (from 8.9 to 10.7 years). Overall, this trend was primarily driven by improvements in health and survival. However, the postponement in the transition to grandparenthood for men slightly slowed down the trend.Peer reviewe

    NoBis: A crowd monitoring service against COVID-19

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    This paper presents NoBis, a new service for monitoring the crowding of indoor spaces in the COVID-19 era. The name links the concept of \u201cWe\u201d to the desire of not having an \u201cEncore\u201d of the first lockdown experienced worldwide in March 2020. NoBis is a REST-based web application which provides tools for allowing \u201cReferents\u201d to manage places to be monitored and, at the same time, for allowing end users to consult in real time the crowding state related to monitored places. The entire platform is based on the use of QR codes which users scan each time they enter (Check-in operation) and exit (Check-out operation) from a monitored place. NoBis is implemented in JavaScript both for the front end, with the help of libraries such as JQuery, and the back-end, through the use of Node.js. This choice allowed for a more agile and\u201dlightweight\u201d development, in accordance with the time constraints required by the project. During the month of September 2020 a preliminary testing phase took place at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Padova. NoBis represents a valuable tool to monitor crowding in libraries and similar enclosed places accessible to the public

    Feature stability and setup minimization for EEG-EMG-enabled monitoring systems

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    Delivering health care at home emerged as a key advancement to reduce healthcare costs and infection risks, as during the SARS-Cov2 pandemic. In particular, in motor training applications, wearable and portable devices can be employed for movement recognition and monitoring of the associated brain signals. This is one of the contexts where it is essential to minimize the monitoring setup and the amount of data to collect, process, and share. In this paper, we address this challenge for a monitoring system that includes high-dimensional EEG and EMG data for the classification of a specific type of hand movement. We fuse EEG and EMG into the magnitude squared coherence (MSC) signal, from which we extracted features using different algorithms (one from the authors) to solve binary classification problems. Finally, we propose a mapping-and-aggregation strategy to increase the interpretability of the machine learning results. The proposed approach provides very low mis-classification errors (< 0.1), with very few and stable MSC features (< 10 % of the initial set of available features). Furthermore, we identified a common pattern across algorithms and classification problems, i.e., the activation of the centro-parietal brain areas and arm’s muscles in 8-80 Hz frequency band, in line with previous literature. Thus, this study represents a step forward to the minimization of a reliable EEG-EMG setup to enable gesture recognition

    Growing patterns of cavernous angioma in the fourth ventricle.

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    Determinants of grandparent–grandchild digital contact in Italy

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    The broad definition of intergenerational contact includes not only meeting face-to-face, but also the important element of communication at a distance, such as via telephone. With the pervasion of the Internet and electronic devices, digital contact has become another increasingly important option. We examined digital contact between grandparents and grandchildren in comparison with traditional forms of contact (i.e. face-to-face and by telephone) using Italian data from the 2016 Families, Social Subjects and life cycle (FSS) survey. We found that grandparents belonging to younger cohorts, those with higher education, those who lived in urban areas and those in better health were more likely to maintain digital contact with their grandchildren. Results also show that digital contact tends to compensate for a lack of (frequent) face-to-face contact, and to cumulate with telephone contact. Our results have significant implications for the current and future development of intergenerational relationships as they suggest an increasing role of digital contact for distant geographical situations. Against the background of persisting inequalities in the access and the use of the Internet, our findings emphasise the need to improve digital network connectivity and user skills, particularly among specific sub-groups of the population
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