Tecniche di guida innovative in scenari complessi.

La prima fase del lavoro tratta dello sviluppo, dell'implementazione e del test pratico di un sistema di guida basato su waypoints per veicoli aerei senza pilota. In una seconda parte viene invece fatto uno studio teorico e sperimentale riguardante la questione della visibilità di un target in un ambiente complesso. Nella prima parte il sistema di guida viene dapprima progettato come un sistema fuzzy, basato su due controllori di Takagi-Sugeno, in seguito questi vengono sostituiti da due mappe discrete, in quanto il sistema di guida iniziale viene adattato ai requisiti imposti dall'hardware utilizzato nelle fasi di testing. Vengono riportati i risultati di una simulazione con Hardware in the Loop e presentato un test di volo, in cui tutti i concetti sviluppati sono testati in uno scenario reale. Nella seconda parte, l'obiettivo è il calcolo di una strategia di moto che mantenga alto il livello di visibilità di un target in un ambiente complesso. Il target viene considerato fisso, a velocità costante ed infine manovrato attraverso un sistema di guida. Questo trasformerà il problema in un cosiddetto gioco differenziale che viene risolto. Tra le applicazioni viene descritto brevemente un task di sorveglianza che utilizza la guida a waypoint descritta nella prima parte. Viene invece ampiamente trattato un task di intercettazione basato sulla legge di guida PNG, opportunamente modificata. L'intercettazione vede coinvolti dapprima un solo veicolo inseguitore contro un target; in seguito vengono considerati due veicoli inseguitori per lo stesso target ed infine due target che cercano di sfuggire ad un solo inseguitore

The meaning of assessment with and through young children:A socio-cultural perspective

This qualitative study, carried out in an early learning center in an international school in Japan, aims to examine the place, meaning, and practice of assessment of young children’s learning through the methodology of documentation as defined and developed by the educators of the Reggio Emilia Approach. Whereas most aspects of instruction and assessment practices focus on individual performances and achievements, this study looks at the learning strategies of young children within the group and the learning of the group and the complexities of assessment practices assigned to socio-cultural theory. The focus of this study, therefore, is framed within socio-cultural theory to look at the intersection of the two, that of group learning and documentation, where the systematic and purposeful documentation of the ways in which groups develop ideas, theories and understanding is given space as being critical to learning of individuals as well as of groups towards building an understanding of assessment from a socio-cultural perspective. Learning is viewed as relevant to experience where the relations between the social and personal (cultural) are shared and that each person learns autonomously and through the ways of learning of others. The study was carried out in the form of action research in the course of one academic year, with the researcher acting as an active participant observer to a group of 4 children and a teacher who formed a learning group through a yearlong project on the concept of color. The teacher was asked to document the process of the salient paths of learning of the children through the project, becoming the ‘documentor’ of the project, and the researcher ‘documenting the documentor’. The main findings suggest to view learning of young children as a web of reciprocal expectations and possibilities of engagement built upon children’s constant mediation between scientific and everyday concepts with and through others.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Fly on the right:Lateral preferences when choosing aircraft seats

A small preference has been observed for people to choose seats on the left of aircraft when booking via an online system. Although this is consistent with pseudoneglect – the known leftward bias in perception and representation - rightward preferences have been commonly observed in seating selection tasks in other environments. Additionally, the previous research in aircraft seating was unable to dissociate a bias to one side of the screen from a bias to one side of the cabin of the aircraft. Here we present a study in which participants were asked to select seats for a range of fictional flights. They demonstrated a preference for seats on the right of the cabin, irrespective of whether the right of the cabin appeared to either the right or the left of the screen, a preference for seats towards the front of the aircraft and a preference to favour window and aisle seats. This suggests, in contrast to previous research, that participants demonstrated a rightward lateral bias to representations of an aircraft. These results may have implications for our understanding of asymmetries in cognition as well as having potentially important practical implications for airlines

Un sistema di monitoring SLA a livello applicativo

In questo lavoro si vuole studiare il problema del monitoring di quei parametri del SLA che riguardano aspetti definiti a livello applicativo, nei contesti dell’erogazione di servizi business-to-business

Expression of Alpha-Enolase (ENO1), Myc Promoter-Binding Protein-1 (MBP-1) and Matrix Metalloproteinases (MMP-2 and MMP-9) Reflect the Nature and Aggressiveness of Breast Tumors

Breast cancer is a complex and heterogeneous disease: Several molecular alterations cause cell proliferation and the acquisition of an invasive phenotype. Extracellular matrix (ECM) is considered essential for sustaining tumor growth and matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) have been identified as drivers of many aspects of the tumor phenotype. Mounting evidence indicates that both α-enolase (ENO1) and Myc promoter-binding protein-1 (MBP-1) also played pivotal roles in tumorigenesis, although as antagonists. ENO1 is involved in cell growth, hypoxia tolerance and autoimmune activities besides its major role in the glycolysis pathway. On the contrary, MBP-1, an alternative product of ENO1, suppresses cell proliferation and the invasive ability of cancer cells. Since an important task in personalized medicine is to discriminate a different subtype of patients with different clinical outcomes including chances of recurrence and metastasis, we investigated the functional relationship between ENO1/MBP-1 expression and MMP-2 and MMP-9 activity levels in both tissues and sera of breast cancer patients. We focused on the clinical relevance of ENO1 and MMPs (MMP-2 and MMP-9) overexpression in breast cancer tissues: The association between the higher ENO1, MMP-2 and MMP-9 expression with a worse prognosis suggest that the elevated ENO1 and MMPs expression are promising biomarkers for breast cancer. A relationship seems to exist between MBP-1 expression and the decrease in the activity levels of MMP-9 in cancer tissues and MMP-2 in sera. Moreover, the sera of breast cancer patients grouped for MBP-1 expression differentially induced, in vitro, cell proliferation and migration. Our findings support the hypothesis of patient's stratification based on ENO1, MBP-1 and MMPs expression. Elucidating the molecular pathways through which MBP-1 influences MMPs expression and breast cancer regression can lead to the discovery of new management strategies

Unsupervised anomaly detection in pressurized water reactor digital twins using autoencoder neural networks

Deep learning (DL), that is becoming quite popular for prediction and analysis of complex patterns in large amounts of data is used to investigate the safety behaviour of the nuclear plant items. This is achieved by using multiple layers of artificial neural networks to process and transform input data, allowing for the creation of highly accurate predictive models. Particularly to the aim the unsupervised machine learning approach and the digital twin concept in form of pressurized water reactor 2-loop simulator are used. This innovative methodology is based on neural network algorithm that makes capable to predict failures of plant structure, system, and components earlier than the activation of safety and emergency systems. Moreover, to match the objective of the study several scenarios of loss of cooling accident (LOCA) of different break size were simulated. To make the acquisition platform realistic, Gaussian noise was added to the input signals. The neural network has been fed by synthetic dataset provide by PCTRAN simulator and the efficiency in event identification was studied. Further, due to the very limited studies on the unsupervised anomaly detection by means of autoencoder neural networks applied for plant monitoring and surveillance, the methodology has been validated with experimental data from resonant test rig designed for fatigue testing of tubular components. The obtained results demonstrate the reliability and the efficiency of the methodology in detecting anomalous events prior the activation of safety system. Particularly, if the difference between the expected readings and the collected data goes beyond the predetermined threshold, then the anomalous event is identified, e.g., the model detected anomalies up to 38 min before the reactor scram intervention

Proteomic patterns of cultured breast cancer cells and epithelial mammary cells.

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death from cancer among women in western countries. The different types of breast cancer are grouped into invasive and noninvasive forms. Among the invasive types, ductal infiltrating carcinoma (DIC) is the most common and aggressive form. Using an in vitro model consisting of a DIC-derived cell line (8701-BC) and a nontumoral mammary epithelial cell line (HB2), we used the proteomics approach to search for homology and differences in protein expression patterns between tumoral and nontumoral phenotypes. Within an analysis window comprising 1,750 discernible spots we have currently catalogued 140 protein spots of potential interest. Fifty-eight of them were identified by gel matching with reference maps, immunodetection, or N-terminal microsequencing and classified into four functional groups. Twelve proteins were found differentially expressed in two cell lines: four were uniquely present in the neoplastic cell proteome and eight in epithelial cells. In addition, 53 proteins displayed different relative expression levels between the two cell lines, that is, 44 were more elevated in cancer cells and 9 in HB2 cells. Among proteins with greater relative abundance in cancer cells we identified glycolytic enzymes (or their isoforms), which may indicate that the known metabolic dysregulation in cancer can reflect oncogenic-related defects of glycolytic gene expression

Fluorescent naphthalimide-imidazolium hydrogels for biomedical applications

Bioimaging and in vivo imaging are cornerstone technologies in support of biomedical diagnosis. However, in some cases imaging methods have increased cancer risks for patients. Moreover, the most widely used diagnostic medical imaging technique, X-ray imaging, is the largest man-made source of radiation exposure to the general population. Thus, the research of new efficient and less invasive materials for imaging is quite urgent. Supramolecular hydrogels have recently proved to be promising biological carriers to load versatile bioimaging agents for in vitro or in vivo bioimaging, thanks to the ability to undergo reversible swelling and gel–sol transition in response to various physiological stimuli. In addition, the biodegradability and biocompatibility allowed the use of supramolecular gels also for cancer diagnosis, as they can be facilely endocytosed into cells [1]. Remembering the good biological response of some imidazolium derived hydrogels [2], fluorescent imidazolium organic salts, that should own the double function of gelator and bioimaging agent, have been synthesized. New fluorescent hydrogels with interesting physico-chemical properties (rheology, gel-sol temperature transition and optical properties) have been tested for anti-proliferative activity, in vitro bioimaging on cancer cells and controlled release of gelator in physiological medium. Results evidence how these hydrogels can be potentially investigated as new theranostic media for anticancer researc

Anterior palatoplasty: Effectiveness for treatment of simple snoring and mild osas

Positive airway pressure is the treatment of choice among obstructive sleep apnea syndrome patients. Among surgical options, multilevel approach is a good option in patients with an involvement of all tract of first airway. The aim of the present work is to establish the efficacy of anterior palatoplasty in the treatment of selected patients with mild obstructive sleep apnea syndrome or simple snoring, within a multilevel surgery. The group was composed of 16 mild obstructive sleep apnea syndrome adult patients collected from January 2015 to June 2016 at University of Palermo, Ear, Nose and Throat Department. To make diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, we employed polysomnography, the Epworth Sleepiness Scale and an endoscopic study of aerodigestive tract in order to identify the sites of collapse. All patients underwent to inferior turbinate reduction, anterior pharyngoplasty and hyoid suspension. After treatment, 11 patients had Apnea Hypopnea Index â ¤5 and 4 patients less than 50% compared to the starting one. According to Epworth Sleepiness Scale, the daytime sleepiness enhanced from 12.6 to 8.6 post-operative average. Pre-operative mean value of Mullerâ s maneuver was N (nose):2.6, O (oropharinx): 3.4, H (hypopharinx):2.5 Before performing surgical procedure each patient was subjected to sleep endoscopy to evaluate better the pattern of collapse. The post-operative mean outcomes of Muellerâ s Maneuver was: N 1.5, O 1.3, H 1.3. Barbed Anterior pharyngoplasty, combined with other surgical procedures, can be considered a valid surgical option to relieve snoring, and mild apnoic events. Our preliminary results, show that the anterior palatoplasty, combined with other surgical procedures, can be considered a valid surgical option to relieve snoring and mild apnoic events