Weakly bound states of polar molecules in bilayers

We investigate a system of two polarized molecules in a layered trap. The molecules reside in adjacent layers and interact purely via the dipole-dipole interaction. We determine the properties of the ground state of the system as a function of the dipole moment and polarization angle. A bound state is always present in the system and in the weak binding limit the bound state extends to a very large distance and shows universal behavior.Comment: Presented at the 21st European Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Salamanca, Spain, 30 August - 3 September 201

Transient model of a Professional Oven

Tackling the climate change by reducing energy consumption is among the biggest, most urgent challenges society is facing and requires a continuous efficiency improvement of thermal systems. Appropriate design strategies, developed a priori and then experimentally validated according to suitable test protocols on a prototype, are needed in order to reach potential energy saving targets. These strategies can successfully be implemented in the food service sector, where cooking appliances, in particular, present many possibilities for improving energy savings. Therefore, a valuable design methodology should take into account not only steady state operating conditions but also the transient behaviours of the device, which must be described by means of specially developed theoretical dynamic models. The operating profile of an oven, for example, consists of a sequence of unsteady phases (cavity heating-up, food introduction and extraction, switching from one cooking mode to another) interspersed with steady cooking phases. The dynamic model presented in this paper defines the energy conservation equations of a professional oven, where a high temperature thermal source positioned inside its cavity produces thermal power radiated and modulated over time, according to a suitable control strategy. In particular, when the temperature in the cooking zone of the cavity has reached a specified set point, this is thermostatically controlled in time, depending on the cooking phase. The resulting equation system is then solved by means of numerical methods. With this code, it is possible to support the design phase of both the structure and the control strategy of the oven. It permits, for example, to get a general understanding of the best possible configurations and combinations of insulation materials for the cavity walls or, with reference to the control strategy, to simulate different cooking procedures, with the aim of optimizing the operating sequence of the oven, reaching the maximum energy saving without reducing the cooking quality. The code, validated by comparison with a set of experimental data obtained with a current production model, will be applied in the design phase of a new line of high efficiency professional ovens

A wide difference in cancer survival between middle aged and elderly patients in Europe.

Abstract Nowadays the burden of cancer in elderly people has reached an alarming extent. The purpose of this study is comparing cumulative and conditional relative survival in elderly patients between 65 and 84 years and younger adults aged from 55 to 64. Fifty-three cancer registries of 22 European countries, participating in the EUROCARE-3 programme, collected information on the cases diagnosed over the period 1990-1994. We computed cumulative and conditional relative survival for 16 cancer sites. Middle aged patients experienced a better prognosis than the elderly for all cancer sites, in both sexes and the differences were more marked at 1 than 5 years since diagnosis. The very large differences noted in the first period after cancer detection declined in the subsequent years and, when 5-years conditional survival was considered, for several cancers the elderly and younger adults had the same probabilities of surviving. The death relative excess risks (RERs) in the elderly with respect younger individuals were really very high and markedly larger at 1 than 5 years, and in women than men. Genitourinary and gynaecological cancers showed the highest RERs, around 2.0 and between 1.5 and 2.5 respectively. This very high early mortality could be due not only to clinical aspects: the barriers to health care access and a consequent late diagnosis might represent for elderly patients the main determinant of this very large prognostic disadvantage. In conclusion, clinical management of cancer in the elderly remains a major issue to be faced with complex social and health care policies

EFFECTS OF THE USE OF D-LIMONENE AS AN ADDITIVE TO DIESEL-BIODIESEL BLENDS ON EXHAUST GASES COMPOSITION OF COMPRESSION IGNITION ENGINES

The transesterification of vegetable oils results in methyl esters of fatty acid, known as biodiesel. This one presents similar features of diesel oil, such as cetane number, specific weight, heat of combustion and air-fuel ratio. However, arising problems from its higher viscosity leads to a poor spraying by the fuel injectors and so to a low-grade combustion, causing formation of undesirable deposits inside the engine, changes in the properties of the lubricating oil and in the composition of the exhaust gas. Owing to this issue, it is necessary to study an additive able to make biodiesel characteristics more appropriate to be used in compression ignition engines, as well as a monitoring of changes in exhaust gas composition. The chosen additive was d-limonene, a monocyclic terpene obtained as a byproduct of citriculture. This paper presents the preliminary results obtained from the tests in a stationary diesel engine fuelled with mixtures of diesel-biodiesel and d-limonene, in different concentrations, comparing to regular diesel fuel. Although it was used in low concentrations, the additive was efficient in the reduction of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and opacity

Nature-Inspired Interconnects for Self-Assembled Large-Scale Network-on-Chip Designs

Future nano-scale electronics built up from an Avogadro number of components needs efficient, highly scalable, and robust means of communication in order to be competitive with traditional silicon approaches. In recent years, the Networks-on-Chip (NoC) paradigm emerged as a promising solution to interconnect challenges in silicon-based electronics. Current NoC architectures are either highly regular or fully customized, both of which represent implausible assumptions for emerging bottom-up self-assembled molecular electronics that are generally assumed to have a high degree of irregularity and imperfection. Here, we pragmatically and experimentally investigate important design trade-offs and properties of an irregular, abstract, yet physically plausible 3D small-world interconnect fabric that is inspired by modern network-on-chip paradigms. We vary the framework's key parameters, such as the connectivity, the number of switch nodes, the distribution of long- versus short-range connections, and measure the network's relevant communication characteristics. We further explore the robustness against link failures and the ability and efficiency to solve a simple toy problem, the synchronization task. The results confirm that (1) computation in irregular assemblies is a promising and disruptive computing paradigm for self-assembled nano-scale electronics and (2) that 3D small-world interconnect fabrics with a power-law decaying distribution of shortcut lengths are physically plausible and have major advantages over local 2D and 3D regular topologies

Topological p_x+ip_y Superfluid Phase of Fermionic Polar Molecules

We discuss the topological p_x+ip_y superfluid phase in a 2D gas of single-component fermionic polar molecules dressed by a circularly polarized microwave field. This phase emerges because the molecules may interact with each other via a potential V_0(r) that has an attractive dipole-dipole 1/r^3 tail, which provides p-wave superfluid pairing at fairly high temperatures. We calculate the amplitude of elastic p-wave scattering in the potential V_0(r) taking into account both the anomalous scattering due to the dipole-dipole tail and the short-range contribution. This amplitude is then used for the analytical and numerical solution of the renormalized BCS gap equation which includes the second order Gor'kov-Melik-Barkhudarov corrections and the correction related to the effective mass of the quasiparticles. We find that the critical temperature T_c can be varied within a few orders of magnitude by modifying the short-range part of the potential V_0(r). The decay of the system via collisional relaxation of molecules to dressed states with lower energies is rather slow due to the necessity of a large momentum transfer. The presence of a constant transverse electric field reduces the inelastic rate, and the lifetime of the system can be of the order of seconds even at 2D densities ~ 10^9 cm^{-2}. This leads to T_c of up to a few tens of nanokelvins and makes it realistic to obtain the topological p_x+ip_y phase in experiments with ultracold polar molecules.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figures, published versio

A Very Early "fashion": Neolithic Stone Bracelets from a Mediterranean Perspective

Ring-shaped objects, used mainly as bracelets, appear in the archaeological record associated with the first farming societies around the Mediterranean area. These bracelets, among other personal ornaments, are related to the spread of the farming economy in the Mediterranean (10th-6th millennium BC). In particular, stone bracelets, given their intricate technology, are linked with the early stages of craft specialization and the beginnings of complex social organization. Likewise, their frequency in Early Neolithic assemblages and the lithologies in which they were made have become an important element in the study of the circulation networks of goods, as well as the symbolic behaviors and aesthetic preferences of the first farming groups. This research provides the first overview of the stone bracelets of Neolithic groups in the Mediterranean. We compare the similarities and differences among these ornaments in different geographical zones across the region including Turkey, Greece, Italy, and Spain. Using all the information available about these ornaments - chronology, typology, raw materials and manufacturing processes, use-wear, repair, and alteration practices - we shed light on a complex archaeological trans-cultural manifestation related to the spread of the Neolithic lifestyle across the European continent

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

On the segmentation of astronomical images via level-set methods

Astronomical images are of crucial importance for astronomers since they contain a lot of information about celestial bodies that can not be directly accessible. Most of the information available for the analysis of these objects starts with sky explorations via telescopes and satellites. Unfortunately, the quality of astronomical images is usually very low with respect to other real images and this is due to technical and physical features related to their acquisition process. This increases the percentage of noise and makes more difficult to use directly standard segmentation methods on the original image. In this work we will describe how to process astronomical images in two steps: in the first step we improve the image quality by a rescaling of light intensity whereas in the second step we apply level-set methods to identify the objects. Several experiments will show the effectiveness of this procedure and the results obtained via various discretization techniques for level-set equations.Comment: 24 pages, 59 figures, paper submitte