PROGETTO DI CASSA DI ESPANSIONE TRA IL TORRENTE RIGO DI COLONNA ED IL TORRENTE SOVATA IN PROVINCIA DI GROSSETO

La tesi tratta il progetto di una cassa di espansione in derivazione in corrispondenza della confluenza tra il Torrente Rigo di Colonna ed il Torrente Sovata nel territorio del comune di Gavorrano in Provincia di Grosseto

Custom Dual Transportation Mode Detection by Smartphone Devices Exploiting Sensor Diversity

Making applications aware of the mobility experienced by the user can open the door to a wide range of novel services in different use-cases, from smart parking to vehicular traffic monitoring. In the literature, there are many different studies demonstrating the theoretical possibility of performing Transportation Mode Detection (TMD) by mining smart-phones embedded sensors data. However, very few of them provide details on the benchmarking process and on how to implement the detection process in practice. In this study, we provide guidelines and fundamental results that can be useful for both researcher and practitioners aiming at implementing a working TMD system. These guidelines consist of three main contributions. First, we detail the construction of a training dataset, gathered by heterogeneous users and including five different transportation modes; the dataset is made available to the research community as reference benchmark. Second, we provide an in-depth analysis of the sensor-relevance for the case of Dual TDM, which is required by most of mobility-aware applications. Third, we investigate the possibility to perform TMD of unknown users/instances not present in the training set and we compare with state-of-the-art Android APIs for activity recognition.Comment: Pre-print of the accepted version for the 14th Workshop on Context and Activity Modeling and Recognition (IEEE COMOREA 2018), Athens, Greece, March 19-23, 201

Context-Aware Android Applications through Transportation Mode Detection Techniques

In this paper, we study the problem of how to detect the current transportation mode of the user from the smartphone sensors data, because this issue is considered crucial for the deployment of a multitude of mobility-aware systems, ranging from trace collectors to health monitoring and urban sensing systems. Although some feasibility studies have been performed in the literature, most of the proposed systems rely on the utilization of the GPS and on computational expensive algorithms that do not take into account the limited resources of mobile phones. On the opposite, this paper focuses on the design and implementation of a feasible and efficient detection system that takes into account both the issues of accuracy of classification and of energy consumption. To this purpose, we propose the utilization of embedded sensor data (accelerometer/gyroscope) with a novel meta-classifier based on a cascading technique, and we show that our combined approach can provide similar performance than a GPS-based classifier, but introducing also the possibility to control the computational load based on requested confidence. We describe the implementation of the proposed system into an Android framework that can be leveraged by third-part mobile applications to access context-aware information in a transparent way

Molecular marketing, personalised information and willingness‐to‐pay for functional foods: Vitamin D enriched eggs

Increasingly, the health claims made by food products focus on the marketing of specific molecular enrichments. Research exploring consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for health claims assumes that individuals hold perfect information on the benefits of the enrichment, and that their valuations depend solely on whether or not they need to improve their health. While health interventions are aimed at individuals at higher health risk, consumers may be unaware of the health risks that they face, limiting the effectiveness of a generic targeting strategy. Using an orthogonal experimental design, we explore the impact of two factors on the WTP for vitamin D enrichment in eggs: whether the information is person-specific or generic; and the presence of a health claim explaining the vitamin D enrichment. Results indicate that it is the provision of information, not the health claim, that influences WTP. Both generic and personalised information lead to similar increases in the WTP for vitamin D enrichment. While we only observe a direct effect of generic information on the WTP for vitamin D enrichment, personal informa- tion may also operate by increasing the perceived risk of vitamin D deficiency. Our results support the use of personalised health information during the choice task as a means of increasing the sales of healthy products

A Proposal to Expand the Community of Users Able to Process Historical Rainfall Data by Means of the Today Available Open Source Libraries

The paper presents a software architecture based on open source technologies, implemented by the authors in an experience of processing spatio-temporal data gathered by rain gauges spread across two regions of central Italy. The interest in the automatic processing of data about precipitation is widespread, however, today only an inner circle of stakeholders can think of taking advantage of the available open source libraries because a strong programming skill is required to use them. It is opinion of the authors that the implemented software architecture is suitable for expanding the community of users able to process “by themselves” historical precipitation data. The centre of the architecture is the technology of the spatial database management systems. They offer full support for the creation and management of a spatial database suitable to store the rainfall data usually spread out in several files. Moreover, they allow adding to such a repository a large set of ad hoc “objects” oriented to carrying out spatio-temporal computations on the precipitation. The stakeholders are only required to familiarize with the database’s objects and invoke their execution. A large part of the paper is devoted to show how the adopted conceptual setting can assist nontechnical users in carrying out personalized computations on rain gauges data. The computing needs posed by the experience described in this paper are common to many other areas of high social impact that involve spatio-temporal data, hence we believe that the implemented framework can be exported to them, keeping unaltered operational effectiveness

Blockchain and Web of Things for Structural Health Monitoring Applications: A Proof of Concept

Interoperable and secure data management techniques are fundamental for most of large-scale Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems. Indeed, given the relevance of SHM critical measurements, data integrity must be protected against tampering or falsifications. In this paper, we propose a four-layer SHM architecture that allows to build an effective data pipeline from sensors to consumer applications, passing through the cloud. The architecture is built on top of the MODRON platform and exploits the recent advances of the W3C Web of Things (WoT) standard for interoperability. We then discuss how third-party services can take benefit of the W3C WoT architecture to retrieve the SHM critical data and to publish them on the Ethereum Blockchain through an SHM-specific Smart Contract, for data protection and traceability purposes. We test the effectiveness of the Smart Contract implementation in terms of latency and costs under simulated workload

Visuo-spatial attention and reading abilities: an action game prototype for dyslexic children

The ability to play action videogames – not directly related to phonological or orthographic training – seems to be a teaching tool able to intervene specifically on spatial attention and drastically improve the reading skills of dyslexic children. The MADRIGALE project aims at the design and development of an action game, simultaneously involving both phonological and attention training in order to adapt educational game strategies for special needs. Within the MADRIGALE project, the design of the prototype was presented at the International Conference on Intelligent Networking and Collaborative Systems, while an experimentation about educational effectiveness of the prototype, conducted using ‘Prove MT2’ as a benchmarking tool for measuring accuracy and speed of reading, was published in the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET). This paper is an extension of the work presented in SIREM – SIEL 2014 Conference, and presents the results of a Game Evaluation Sheet administered to 50 primary school teachers with experience of dyslexic student

the interaction of peptides and proteins with nanostructures surfaces a challenge for nanoscience

Abstract The impact of nanotechnologies in biomedicine and biotechnology is becoming more and more evident. It imposes practical challenges, for instance, raising specific issues on the biocompatibility of nanostructures. Nanoparticles are characterized by a high surface-to-volume ratio, which makes them reactive to foreign species. Thus, when proteins or peptides approach an inorganic nanoparticle, as well as a flat surface, they are likely to interact with the substrate to some extent. This interaction is crucial for applications in drug delivery, imaging, diagnostics, implants, and other medical devices. Specifically, gold nanoparticles are highly versatile and particularly appealing. It is widely accepted that the surfaces of nanoparticles adsorb proteins either transiently in the soft corona layer or permanently in the hard corona layer. As a consequence, the protein structure and/or function may undergo profound adjustments or remain conserved. Detailing the interaction of different inorganic substrates with proteins and peptides at the atomic level, and designing ways to control the interaction, is the key for biomedical applications of nanoparticles, both from a fundamental viewpoint and for practical implementations. In the last decade, we have addressed protein–nanoparticle interactions, focusing on interfaces of gold surfaces and nanoparticles with amyloidogenic peptides and protein models. We have developed classical force fields, performed advanced molecular dynamics simulations, and compared computational outcomes with data from nuclear magnetic resonance experiments. Protein–gold complexes with differently coated gold nanoparticles have been modeled to explore the effects of charge and size on the protein structure. Our work unravels that a complex interplay between surface properties and characteristics of the biological adsorbate determines whether peptide conformation is influenced and whether protein aggregation is accelerated or inhibited by the presence of the substrate. General guidelines to cope with amyloidogenic proteins could be inferred: these can be essentially summarized with the necessity of balancing the hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions that the amyloidogenic proteins establish with the coating moieties

Towards the abandonment of surgical castration in pigs: How is immunocastration perceived by Italian consumers?

Immunocastration of pigs represents an alternative method to surgical castration, being more respectful of animal welfare. However, this new technology may not be accepted by consumers due to their perception of possible risks tied to the use of the product, thus representing a concern for the production sector. The study aimed at verifying the attitude of Italian consumers towards immunocastration and to assess whether their perception can be affected by science-based information on advantages and disadvantages of immunocastration. A total of 969 consumers (divided in three groups representative of the Italian population) were contacted and asked to complete an online questionnaire. Only technical (neutral) information on immunocastration was provided to the first group; the second and the third group received information on the advantages (+) and disadvantages (-) of the technique, shown in reverse order (+/- and -/+, respectively). The level of information did not affect consumers\u2019 perception of immunocastration. Overall, immunocastration is perceived in a predominantly positive manner (54.5%), with a relatively low level of risk perception (34.2%), and a good willingness to pay more for meat deriving from immunocastrated pigs (+18.7%)