Evaluation of political control instruments for the Swiss alpine region

This paper analyses different direct payments system for the Swiss alpine region based on the multi-agent model SWISSland. Moreover, the future demand and management of the alpine pastures are simulated under different scenarios until 2020. In the model, agents are representing existing summer farms and are able to interact with each other. The results imply that the current direct payment system for the Swiss alpine region is effective and able to maintain a stable development until 2020. Since the land management in the alpine region is the activity that provides public goods, it would be reasonable to enforce payments that maximize the area of summered land. A change to contributions coupled to the surfaces could achieve the desired management of the alpine pastures meaning, at the same time, a need of proper monitoring systems.multi-agent models, policy analysis, simulation, alpine region, Agricultural and Food Policy, C16, Q18.,

Relaxed germanium epilayers on porous silicon buffers for low dislocation content Ge on Si virtual substrates

While silicon represents the dominant material in the semiconductor industry, the continuous improvement in the performance of Si based devices is reaching its upper bound due to the approaching of insuperable physical limitations intrinsic to Si, which requires the introduction of new semiconductor materials and the development of new assembly techniques to guarantee the future performance improvement and reduction in fabrication costs. The integration of high-quality germanium epilayers on Si substrates has received great attention from the semiconductor community due to the chance to extend the range of performance offered by Si-based technology by taking advantage of both the superior properties of Ge such as a higher carrier mobility, a lattice constant close to that of GaAs which enables III-V epitaxy and a quasi-direct bandgap, and of the possibility of strain and bandgap engineering offered by the formation of a heterojunction. To overcome the 4.2% lattice constant mismatch existing between Ge and Si which hamper the direct integration approach, this thesis investigates a novel technique for the realization of high-quality Ge on Si virtual substrates (VSs), consisting in the introduction of a porous silicon (pSi) buffer layer in between Ge and Si. pSi is a versatile, self-assembled, nanomaterial which can be realized at very high growth rates through electrochemical etching of Si. Thanks to its reduced Young’s and shear moduli pSi can deform during epitaxy, potentially alleviating part of the lattice mismatch between Ge and Si and reducing the density of misfit dislocations and associated threading segments necessary for complete Ge relaxation. Together with the very high throughput of the anodization process, other fundamental advantages of the proposed approach are its low cost, its simple scalability to large area Si substrates and the possibility to lift-off the grown epilayers from the starting substrates, giving Ge on pSi VSs the possibility to outperform other existing techniques for Ge integration on Si. During the course of this work, several Ge on pSi VSs have been grown through low energy plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (LEPECVD) technique, and the resulting crystalline quality has been compared to that of Ge on Si VSs. Using X-ray diffraction techniques, together with electron microscopy analysis and selective etching techniques, it will be shown how the main physical parameters of pSi buffers affect the crystalline quality of Ge heteroepilayers. Finally, it will be demonstrated that strong threading dislocation reduction is possible in Ge grown on low porosity pSi buffers compared to Ge on bulk Si, at parity of experimental conditions, and the main mechanisms responsible for crystalline quality improvement in Ge grown on pSi will be uncovered

A cross‐sectorial review of industrial best practices and case histories on Industry 4.0 technologies

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) was introduced in 2011, and its advanced enablers strongly affect industrial practices. In the current literature, while several papers offer general reviews on the topic, contributions exploring the evidences coming from the implementation of I4.0 in multi-sector Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises are few and expected. To address this gap, a comprehensive review of the main I4.0 enabling technologies is conducted, focusing on implementation experiences in companies belonging to different sectors. Forty (40) real case studies are analyzed and compared. The results show that 63% of the identified applications involve large enterprises in the transport sector, that is, automotive, aeronautics, and railway, adopting a structured set of enabling technologies. SMEs engaged in I4.0 projects primarily belong to the mechanical engineering sector, and 37% of such projects deals with the preliminary feasibility analysis of introducing a single enabling technology. Conclusions and trends guide researchers and practitioners in understanding the implementation level of I4.0 technologies

prognostic health management of production systems new proposed approach and experimental evidences

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Gallbladder Agenesis and Cystic Duct Absence in an Adult Patient Diagnosed by Magnetic Resonance Cholangiography: Report of a Case and Review of the Literature

Gallbladder agenesis (GA) is a rare congenital anomaly of the biliary system often associated with other congenital abnormalities. Patients become symptomatic in 23% of cases. GA is often misinterpreted as other diseases, therefore, leading to unnecessary surgery. We report a case of congenital GA associated to cystic duct absence and a biliary tract abnormality diagnosed by Magnetic Resonance with Cholangiopancreatography

Healthspan Enhancement by Olive Polyphenols in C. elegans Wild Type and Parkinson’s Models

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most prevalent late-age onset neurodegenerative disorder, affecting 1% of the population after the age of about 60 years old and 4% of those over 80 years old, causing motor impairments and cognitive dysfunction. Increasing evidence indicates that Mediterranean diet (MD) exerts beneficial effects in maintaining health, especially during ageing and by the prevention of neurodegenerative disorders. In this regard, olive oil and its biophenolic constituents like hydroxytyrosol (HT) have received growing attention in the past years. Thus, in the current study we test the health-promoting effects of two hydroxytyrosol preparations, pure HT and Hidrox® (HD), which is hydroxytyrosol in its “natural” environment, in the established invertebrate model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. HD exposure led to much stronger beneficial locomotion effects in wild type worms compared to HT in the same concentration. Consistent to this finding, in OW13 worms, a PD-model characterized by α-synuclein expression in muscles, HD exhibited a significant higher effect on α-synuclein accumulation and swim performance than HT, an effect partly confirmed also in swim assays with the UA44 strain, which features α-synuclein expression in DA-neurons. Interestingly, beneficial effects of HD and HT treatment with similar strength were detected in the lifespan and autofluorescence of wild-type nematodes, in the neuronal health of UA44 worms as well as in the locomotion of rotenone-induced PD-model. Thus, the hypothesis that HD features higher healthspan-promoting abilities than HT was at least partly confirmed. Our study demonstrates that HD polyphenolic extract treatment has the potential to partly prevent or even treat ageing-related neurodegenerative diseases and ageing itself. Future investigations including mammalian models and human clinical trials are needed to uncover the full potential of these olive compounds.Peer Reviewe

Healthspan Enhancement by Olive Polyphenols in C. elegans Wild Type and Parkinson’s Models

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most prevalent late-age onset neurodegenerative disorder, affecting 1% of the population after the age of about 60 years old and 4% of those over 80 years old, causing motor impairments and cognitive dysfunction. Increasing evidence indicates that Mediterranean diet (MD) exerts beneficial effects in maintaining health, especially during ageing and by the prevention of neurodegenerative disorders. In this regard, olive oil and its biophenolic constituents like hydroxytyrosol (HT) have received growing attention in the past years. Thus, in the current study we test the health-promoting effects of two hydroxytyrosol preparations, pure HT and Hidrox® (HD), which is hydroxytyrosol in its “natural” environment, in the established invertebrate model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. HD exposure led to much stronger beneficial locomotion effects in wild type worms compared to HT in the same concentration. Consistent to this finding, in OW13 worms, a PD-model characterized by α-synuclein expression in muscles, HD exhibited a significant higher effect on α-synuclein accumulation and swim performance than HT, an effect partly confirmed also in swim assays with the UA44 strain, which features α-synuclein expression in DA-neurons. Interestingly, beneficial effects of HD and HT treatment with similar strength were detected in the lifespan and autofluorescence of wild-type nematodes, in the neuronal health of UA44 worms as well as in the locomotion of rotenone-induced PD-model. Thus, the hypothesis that HD features higher healthspan-promoting abilities than HT was at least partly confirmed. Our study demonstrates that HD polyphenolic extract treatment has the potential to partly prevent or even treat ageing-related neurodegenerative diseases and ageing itself. Future investigations including mammalian models and human clinical trials are needed to uncover the full potential of these olive compounds

Entanglement Entropy dynamics in Heisenberg chains

By means of the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group algorithm we study the zero-temperature dynamics of the Von Neumann entropy of a block of spins in a Heisenberg chain after a sudden quench in the anisotropy parameter. In the absence of any disorder the block entropy increases linearly with time and then saturates. We analyze the velocity of propagation of the entanglement as a function of the initial and final anisotropies and compare, wherever possible, our results with those obtained by means of Conformal Field Theory. In the disordered case we find a slower (logarithmic) evolution which may signals the onset of entanglement localization.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure