Localization and tracking in known large environments using portable real-time 3D sensors

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COVID-19 pandemic and ophthalmological emergencies: a case-control analysis of the impact of lockdowns in a University Hospital in Lombardy region, Italy

Purpose: to evaluate the incidence of ocular pathologies seen at the ophthalmological emergency department (OeD) during the national lockdown in 2020 due to the cOViD-19 pandemic and compare it to the corresponding period in 2019.Methods: electronic records of patients who presented at the OeD of our University hospital in Varese, italy during the cOViD-19 lockdown were compared with that from the corresponding period in 2019. Records from the spring (2020a) and winter (2020B) lockdowns were compared with each other and with the same periods in 2019 (2019a and 2019B). statistical analyses were performed by unpaired student’s t-tests, Poisson’s regression and chi-square test.Results: the number of consultations at the OeD significantly decreased during the cOViD-19 lockdown (p value <.0001). the largest decreases were observed in the youngest (age <15 years: –77.3%) and oldest (age >61 years, –68.5%) age groups. the proportion of men who consulted increased significantly from 61.76% in 2019a to 67.63% in 2020a, and from 54.56% in 2019B to 62.79% in 2020B. a significant reduction in deferrable consultations was also reported (from 943 in 2019 to 335 in 2020; p value <.0001). a statistically significant decrease in the number of consultations involving ocular trauma was also reported despite an increase in its proportion among all consultations for ocular pathologies in 2020.Conclusions: Our evaluation showed a significant reduction in the number of OeD consultations in all deferrable pathologies. although the incidence of conditions that affect visual function was lower, these were more frequent in the lockdown period. the significant reduction in the number of deferrable consultations highlights the misuse of the OeD

Mulching in lowland hay meadows drives an adaptive convergence of above- and below-ground traits reducing plasticity and improving biomass: A possible tool for enhancing phytoremediation

We aimed to understand the effect of mulching (i.e., cutting and leaving the crushed biomass to decompose in situ) on above- and below-ground plant functional traits and whether this practice may be a potential tool for enhancing the phytoremediation of lowland hay meadows. To this aim, we evaluated at the community level seven years of mulching application in a PCBs and HMs soil-polluted Site of National Interest (SIN Brescia-Caffaro) through the analysis of the floristic composition and the above- and below-ground plant traits. We found that the abandonment of agricultural activities led to a marked increase in the soil organic carbon and pH, and the over-imposed mulching additionally induced a slight increase in soil nutrients. Mulching favored the establishment of a productive plant community characterized by a more conservative-resource strategy, a higher biomass development, and lower plasticity through an adaptative convergence between above- and below-ground organs. In particular, the analysis of the root depth distribution highlighted the key role of roots living in the upper soil layer (10 cm). Mulching did not show a significant effect on plant species known to be effective in terms of PCB phytoremediation. However, the mulching application appears to be a promising tool for enhancing the root web that functions as the backbone for the proliferation of microbes devoted to organic contaminants' degradation and selects a two-fold number of plant species known to be metal-tolerant. However, besides these potential positive effects of the mulching application, favoring species with a higher biomass development, in the long term, may lead to a biodiversity reduction and thus to potential consequences also on the diversity of native species important for the phytoremediation

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Exploring efficient hardware support for applications with irregular memory patterns on multinode manycore architectures

With computing systems becoming ubiquitous, numerous data sets of extremely large size are becoming available for analysis. Often the data collected have complex, graph based structures, which makes them difficult to process with traditional tools. Moreover, the irregularities in the data sets, and in the analysis algorithms, hamper the scaling of performance in large distributed highperformance systems, optimized for locality exploitation and regular data structures. In this paper we present an approach to system design that enable efficient execution of applications with irregular memory patterns on a distribute, many-core architecture, based on off-the-shelf cores. We introduce a set of hardware and software components, which provide a distributed global address space, fine-grained synchronization and transparently hide the latencies of remote accesses with multithreading. An FPGA prototype has been implemented to explore the design with a set of typical irregular kernels. We finally present an analytical model that highlights the benefits of the approach and help identifying the bottlenecks in the prototypes. The experimental evaluation on graph based applications demonstrates the scalability of the architecture for different configurations of the whole system

Introducing LURCH: a Shared Autonomy Robotic Wheelchair with Multimodal Interfaces

The LURCH project aims at the development of an autonomous wheelchair capable of avoiding obstacles, selflocalize and explore indoor environments in a safe way. To meet disabled people requirements, we have designed the user interface to the autonomous wheelchair in such a way that it can be simply modified and adapted to the users needs. In particular, the user has the opportunity to choose among several autonomy levels (from simple obstacle avoidance to complete autonomous navigation) and different interfaces: a classical joystick, a touch-screen, an electro miographic interface, and a brain-computer interface (BCI), i.e., a system that allows the user to convey intentions by analyzing brain signals