Ostensive signals: markers of communicative relevance of gesture during demonstration to adults and children

Speakers adapt their speech and gestures in various ways for their audience. We investigated further whether they use ostensive signals (eye gaze, ostensive speech (e.g. like this, this) or a combination of both) in relation to their gestures when talking to different addressees, i.e., to another adult or a child in a multimodal demonstration task. While adults used more eye gaze towards their gestures with other adults than with children, they were more likely to use combined ostensive signals for children than for adults. Thus speakers mark the communicative relevance of their gestures with different types of ostensive signals and by taking different types of addressees into account

Carbon Intensity of Passenger Transport Modes: A Review of Emission Factors, Their Variability and the Main Drivers

The transport sector is responsible for a significant amount of global carbon emissions, and several policies are being implemented at different levels to reduce its impact. To properly assess the effectiveness of planned measures, analysts often rely on average emission factors for different transport modes. However, average values often hide significant variability that stems from factors along the entire supply chain of transport modes. This review presents a comprehensive overview of research on this topic, comparing emission factors for different passenger transport modes and discussing the main drivers and parameters that affect their variability. The results are useful for researchers and policymakers to properly understand the reliability of carbon intensity indicators when evaluating the impact and effectiveness of sustainable transport policies

Costruire in pietra, pratica e storia. Laboratorio di stereotomia - Palermo 2016

Il volume raccoglie i contributi presentati in occasione del seminario introduttivo al Laboratorio di stereotomia, tenutosi presso il Dipartimento di Architettura dell'Università degli studi di Palermo nel mese di aprile del 2016, e un contributo che illustra quest'ultima esperienza. Nel complesso, i diversi saggi ruotano intorno al tema della costruzione in pietra nell'ambito dell'architettura tardogotica, con particolare attenzione alle volte, osservata da diversi punti di vista e ambiti disciplinari che spaziano dalla storia, al disegno, alla storia della costruzione. Ricerca e didattica si intrecciano e concorrono a fare nuova luce su esperienze costruttive di primo piano nella storia dell'architettura europea, secondo una modalità già sperimentata da José Carlos Palacios Gonzalo nel Laboratorio di costruzione gotica dell'Universidad Politecnica di Madrid e replicata a Palermo nel Laboratorio di stereotomiaThis volume collects the contributions presented at the introductory seminar at Laboratory of stereotomy, held at the Department of Architecture of the University of Palermo in April of 2016, and a contribution that illustrates this last experience. All the essays deal with the theme of the stone building in late Gothic architecture, with particular attention to the vaults, observed from different points of view and disciplines ranging from history, to drawing, to construction history . Research and teaching are intertwined and help to shed new light on experiences prominent in the history of European architecture, according to a methodology already tested by José Carlos Gonzalo Palacios in the Gothic building Laboratory of the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid and replicated in Palermo in the Laboratory of stereotomy

Efficient solar cells by space processing

Thin films of electron beam evaporated silicon were deposited on molybdenum, tantalum, tungsten and molybdenum disilicide under ultrahigh vacuum conditions. Mass spectra from a quadrapole residual gas analyzer were used to determine the partial pressure of 13 residual gases during each processing step. Surface contamination and interdiffusion were monitored by in situ Auger electron spectrometry. The presence of phosphorus in the silicon was responsible for attaining elevated temperatures with silicide formations. Heteroepitaxial silicon growth was sensitive to the presence of oxygen during deposition, the rate and length of deposition as well as the substrate orientation

Logarithmic oscillators: ideal Hamiltonian thermostats

A logarithmic oscillator (in short, log-oscillator) behaves like an ideal thermostat because of its infinite heat capacity: when it weakly couples to another system, time averages of the system observables agree with ensemble averages from a Gibbs distribution with a temperature T that is given by the strength of the logarithmic potential. The resulting equations of motion are Hamiltonian and may be implemented not only in a computer but also with real-world experiments, e.g., with cold atoms.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. v4: version accepted in Phys. Rev. Let

Prevalence of Toxocara canis eggs in dog faeces from public places of Florence, Italy

AbstractTo determine whether canine faecal contamination may represent a source of environmental contamination with Toxocara canis eggs within the urban area of Florence, a total number of 754 dog faeces were collected in 7 public places and examined by routine floatation technique during one-year period. The total prevalence of intestinal nematode eggs was 8.6 %. Trichuris vulpis (4.6 %) eggs were the most prevalent followed by T. canis (3.6 %) and Ancylostomidae (1.7 %) eggs. Mixed infections included T. canis/T. vulpis (0.7 %), Ancylostomidae/T. canis (0.4 %), and Ancylosto-midae/T. vulpis (0.3 %). Total prevalence of intestinal nematode eggs was significantly higher in spring than in winter (OR = 2.06). Our results indicate a low prevalence of T. canis eggs suggesting that dog faeces left on soil are unlikely to cause high environmental contamination with T. canis eggs in the town of Florence

Transient fluctuation theorem in closed quantum systems

Our point of departure are the unitary dynamics of closed quantum systems as generated from the Schr\"odinger equation. We focus on a class of quantum models that typically exhibit roughly exponential relaxation of some observable within this framework. Furthermore, we focus on pure state evolutions. An entropy in accord with Jaynes principle is defined on the basis of the quantum expectation value of the above observable. It is demonstrated that the resulting deterministic entropy dynamics are in a sense in accord with a transient fluctuation theorem. Moreover, we demonstrate that the dynamics of the expectation value are describable in terms of an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. These findings are demonstrated numerically and supported by analytical considerations based on quantum typicality.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

The management of dental practices in the post-covid 19 era: An economic and operational perspective

Background: In order to protect dental teams and their patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, dentists have had to adopt several measures (operating and post-operating procedures) which may increase the total treatment time and costs relating to individual protective measures. This paper will propose a thorough analysis of operating dentistry procedures, comparing the economic performance of the activity in a dental surgery before and after the adoption of these protective measures, which are required to contain the risk of SARS-COV-2 infections. Methods: The economic analysis is articulated in three approaches. Firstly, it assesses a reduction in markup by maintaining current charges (A); alternatively, it suggests revised charges to adopt in order to maintain unvaried levels of markup (B). And the third Approach (C) examines available dental treatments, highlighting how to profitably combine treatment volumes to reduce markup loss or a restricted increase in dental charges. Results: Maintaining dental charges could cause a loss in markup, even rising to 200% (A); attempting to maintain unvaried levels of markup will result in an increase in dental charges, even at 100% (B); and varying the volumes of the single dental treatments on offer (increasing those which current research indicates as the most profitable) could mitigate the economic impact of the measures to prevent the transmission of SARS-COV-2 (C). Conclusions: The authors of this paper provide managerial insights which can assist the dentist-entrepreneur to become aware of the boundaries of the economic consequences of governmental measures in containing the virus infection

Protein cargo of salivary small extracellular vesicles as potential functional signature of oral squamous cell carcinoma

The early diagnosis of oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is still an investigative challenge. Saliva has been proposed as an ideal diagnostic medium for biomarker detection by mean of liquid biopsy technique. The aim of this pilot study was to apply proteomic and bioinformatic strategies to determine the potential use of saliva small extracellular vesicles (S/SEVs) as a potential tumor biomarker source. Among the twenty-three enrolled patients, 5 were free from diseases (OSCC_FREE), 6 were with OSCC without lymph node metastasis (OSCC_NLNM), and 12 were with OSCC and lymph node metastasis (OSCC_LNM). The S/SEVs from patients of each group were pooled and properly characterized before performing their quantitative proteome comparison based on the SWATH_MS (Sequential Window Acquisition of all Theoretical Mass Spectra) method. The analysis resulted in quantitative information for 365 proteins differentially characterizing the S/SEVs of analyzed clinical conditions. Bioinformatic analysis of the proteomic data highlighted that each S/SEV group was associated with a specific cluster of enriched functional network terms. Our results highlighted that protein cargo of salivary small extracellular vesicles defines a functional signature, thus having potential value as novel predict biomarkers for OSCC