High Speed Wireless Optical System for Motorsport Data Loggers

Telemetry allows to monitor the behavior of a system and it is applied to many different and popular fields such as motorsport. In this case, a data-logger collects all the data coming from different automobile sensors providing a very reliable image of the car status and a better vehicle setup. This paper is focused on the development of a new data-logging system for motorsport application, which meets several process constraints, such as high throughput and low power consumption that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the available devices on the market were not able to satisfy. The new data-logger consists of a fixed and a removable part, which exchanges data through a transceiver exploiting the visible light communication (VLC) technology. In this way, every physical contact between the two parts of the system is avoided. All the communication procedures are managed by a micro-controller mounted on each part of the system. The transceiver consists of the AFBR-1634Z and AFBR-2634Z (Broadcom Limited, San Jose, CA, USA) components, the optical fiber transmitter and the receiver, respectively, produced by Broadcom Inc. By keeping the distance short between them, they can assure a real wireless communication, even without using a high throughput technology like optical fiber. The entire system is powered by an inductive coupling system. In order to test the transceiver, it is connected to a micro-controller reaching a data rate of 8 Mbit/s. But even better performance is achieved by upgrading the micro-controller and changing the transmission technique, connecting the transceiver to the serial peripheral interface (SPI) port of the micro-controller: in this case, a data rate of 21 Mbit/s is reached, perfectly suitable with the application requirements and even further

Study of 138 Neisseria meningitidis strains isolated from blood or cerebrospinal fluid in Lombardy between 2007 and 2010

Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae, and Haemophilus influenzae type b cause the majority of cases of bacterial septicaemia in children and young adults. Disease epidemiology is evolving rapidly due to the introduction of vaccines and changing in bacterial antibiotic-resistance patterns. (Asymptomatic nasopharyngeal colonization with Neisseria meningitides occurs in 5-10% of adult). The aim of this study was to calculate the frequency of each serogroup of this pathogens involved in invasive infection and to study susceptibility to antibiotics of these strains. Between March 2007 and June 2010 we received, from 43 hospitals of Lombardy, 138 strains of Neisseria meningitidis, from 138 patients aged (2-80yrs). The most frequent serogroup was B (58%), followed by serogroup C (34%), serogroup G (4%) and W 135 (2%). Serogroup A end X accounted for 1% of invasive infection, each. We observed a decrease in susceptibility towards penicillin in 38% of strains. In addition we studied, by REP- PCR, genotype of 9 strains selected on the basis of epidemiological data.Among these strains, 3 different clusters according to the 3 small epidemic outbreaks occurred between June and September 2009, were recognised. Seven of these strains, although belonged to the same serogroup, brought about two different clusters. The present findings demonstrated that phenotypic data are not sufficient to define epidemic clusters, therefore molecular genotyping is required

Effects of landscape structure and land-use intensity on similarity of plant and animal communities

Aim Species richness in itself is not always sufficient to evaluate land management strategies for nature conservation. The exchange of species between local communities may be affected by landscape structure and land-use intensity. Thus, species turnover, and its inverse, community similarity, may be useful measures of landscape integrity from a diversity perspective. Location A European transect from France to Estonia. Methods We measured the similarity of plant, bird, wild bee, true bug, carabid beetle, hoverfly and spider communities sampled along gradients in landscape composition (e.g. total availability of semi-natural habitat), landscape configuration (e.g. fragmentation) and land-use intensity (e.g. pesticide loads). Results Total availability of semi-natural habitats had little effect on community similarity, except for bird communities, which were more homogeneous in more natural landscapes. Bee communities, in contrast, were less similar in landscapes with higher percentages of semi-natural habitats. Increased landscape fragmentation decreased similarity of true bug communities, while plant communities showed a nonlinear, U-shaped response. More intense land use, specifically increased pesticide burden, led to a homogenization of bee, bug and spider communities within sites. In these cases, habitat fragmentation interacted with pesticide load. Hoverfly and carabid beetle community similarity was differentially affected by higher pesticide levels: for carabid beetles similarity decreased, while for hoverflies we observed a U-shaped relationship. Main conclusions Our study demonstrates the effects of landscape composition, configuration and land-use intensity on the similarity of communities. It indicates reduced exchange of species between communities in landscapes dominated by agricultural activities. Taxonomic groups differed in their responses to environmental drivers and using but one group as an indicator for 'biodiversity' as such would thus not be advisable

Prediction uncertainty of environmental change effects on temperate European biodiversity.

FR2116International audienceObserved patterns of species richness at landscape scale (gamma diversity) cannot always be attributed to a specific set of explanatory variables, but rather different alternative explanatory statistical models of similar quality may exist. Therefore predictions of the effects of environmental change (such as in climate or land cover) on biodiversity may differ considerably, depending on the chosen set of explanatory variables. Here we use multimodel prediction to evaluate effects of climate, land-use intensity and landscape structure on species richness in each of seven groups of organisms (plants, birds, spiders, wild bees, ground beetles, true bugs and hoverflies) in temperate Europe. We contrast this approach with traditional best-model predictions, which we show, using cross-validation, to have inferior prediction accuracy. Multimodel inference changed the importance of some environmental variables in comparison with the best model, and accordingly gave deviating predictions for environmental change effects. Overall, prediction uncertainty for the multimodel approach was only slightly higher than that of the best model, and absolute changes in predicted species richness were also comparable. Richness predictions varied generally more for the impact of climate change than for land-use change at the coarse scale of our study. Overall, our study indicates that the uncertainty introduced to environmental change predictions through uncertainty in model selection both qualitatively and quantitatively affects species richness projections

Oncoplastic and reconstructive surgery in SENONETWORK Italian breast centers: lights and shadows

: • Despite the significance of oncoplastic procedure, an italian database is lacking. • Senonetwork established a multidisciplinary survey to assess their safety and efficacy. • Reconstructive outcomes were positive across low and high-volume centers. • After mastectomy, implant-based techniques are common. DTI reconstruction is advantageuos. • This contributes to the global understanding of effective strategies against breast cancer