Vision of energy systems for smart cities

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Impact of innovative technologies on highway operators: Tolling organizations' perspective

Highways play a vivacious role in a country's economic growth, by facilitating movement of both goods and people from one place to another. Over a short period of time, innovation in automobile and information technology has seen an unprecedented growth and this exploratory research highlights the impact of advent of innovative technologies like Autonomous and Connected Vehicles, Internet of Things applications and Big Data analytics on highway operators, as reflected in the opinions of organizations around the world (highway operators, toll agencies, suppliers, consultants and associations). The opinions were collected on a Likert scale type online survey, which was later tested for its empirical significance with non-parametric Binomial and Wilcoxon signed rank tests, supported by descriptive analysis. The research results clearly indicate that these technologies and products are not far from realization and while on one hand they would facilitate highway operations on the other hand they may pose some serious challenges for operators

Future Outlook of Highway Operations with Implementation of Innovative Technologies Like AV, CV, IoT and Big Data

In the last couple of decades, there has been an unparalleled growth in number of people who can afford motorized vehicles. This is increasing the number of vehicles on roads at an alarming rate and existing infrastructure and conventional methods of traffic management are becoming inefficient both on highways and in urban areas. It is very important that our highways are up and running 24/7 as they not only provide a passage for human beings to move from one place to another, but also are the most important mode for intercity or international transfer of goods. There is an utter need of adapting the new world order, where daily processes are driven with the help of innovative technologies. It is highly likely that technological advancements like autonomous or connected vehicles, big data and the Internet of things can provide highway operators with a solution that might resolve unforeseeable challenges. This investigative exploratory research identifies and highlights the impact of new technological advancements in the automotive industry on highways and highway operators. The data for this research was collected on a Likert scale type online survey, from different organizations around the world (actively or passively involved in highway operations). The data was further tested for its empirical significance with non-parametric binomial and Wilcoxon signed rank tests, supported by a descriptive analysis. The results of this study are in line with theoretical and conceptual work done by several independent corporations and academic researchers. It is evident form the opinions of seasoned professionals that these technological advancements withhold the potential to resolve all potential challenges and revolutionize highway operations

X-rays affect cytoskeleton assembly and nanoparticle uptake: Preliminary results

Alterations of the cytoskeleton are commonly associated with tumor genesis and cancer progression. For this reason, the characterization of cytoskeletonassociated functions and properties is important to optimize the outcomes to classical and more recent therapeutic approaches, such as chemotherapy, radiotherapy and cancer nanomedicine. In such context, this work investigated the synergy between cancer nanomedicine and radiotherapy. In particular, the effects over time (24 and 48h) of two different doses of X-rays (2 and 10Gy) on spreading area, morphological parameters and the internalization mechanism of carboxylated nanoparticles in mammary epithelial cells and mammary adenocarcinoma cells were investigated

Betti numbers for connected sums of graded Gorenstein artinian algebras

The connected sum construction, which takes as input Gorenstein rings and produces new Gorenstein rings, can be considered as an algebraic analogue for the topological construction having the same name. We determine the graded Betti numbers for connected sums of graded Artinian Gorenstein algebras. Along the way, we find the graded Betti numbers for fiber products of graded rings; an analogous result was obtained in the local case by Geller. We relate the connected sum construction to the doubling construction, which also produces Gorenstein rings. Specifically, we show that a connected sum of doublings is the doubling of a fiber product ring

Nurses and Night Shifts. Poor Sleep Quality Exacerbates Psychomotor Performance

In Europe, 40% of health-care employees are involved in shift work. The altered sleep/wake rhythm of night-shift nurses is also associated with deteriorated cognitive efficiency. In this study, we examine the effects of the night shift on psychomotor performance, sleepiness, and tiredness in a large sample of shift-working nurses and evaluated if poor sleep quality, sex, age, or years on the job could impact on a better adaptation to shift work. Eighty-six nurses with 8-h-rapidly-rotating-shifts were evaluated at the end of three shifts (morning/afternoon/night) for sleepiness and tiredness. Sleepiness, as measured by the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale, and tiredness, as measured by the Tiredness Symptoms Scale, were more pronounced after the night shift. These increases were paralleled by lower attentional performance on the psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) after the night shift. While sex, age, and years on the job did not affect PVT performance after the night shift, lower sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality, PSQI > 5) was associated with decreased performance. The high prevalence of altered sleep quality showed that nurses, and shift workers in general, are at risk for a poor sleep quality. The evaluation of sleep quality through PSQI could represent a rapid, inexpensive tool to assess health-care workers assigned to rotating night shifts or to evaluate nurses who coped poorly with night-shift work

Designing New Hybrid Antibiotics: Proline-Rich Antimicrobial Peptides Conjugated to the Aminoglycoside Tobramycin

Resistance to aminoglycoside antibiotics is a serious problem,typically arising from inactivating enzymes, reduced uptake, or increasedefflux in the important pathogens for which they are used as treatment.Conjugating aminoglycosides to proline-rich antimicrobial peptides(PrAMPs), which also target ribosomes and have a distinct bacterialuptake mechanism, might mutually benefit their individual activities.To this aim we have developed a strategy for noninvasively modifyingtobramycin to link it to a Cys residue and through this covalentlylink it to a Cys-modified PrAMP by formation of a disulfide bond.Reduction of this bridge in the bacterial cytosol should release theindividual antimicrobial moieties. We found that the conjugation oftobramycin to the well-characterized N-terminal PrAMP fragment Bac7(1-35)resulted in a potent antimicrobial capable of inactivating not onlytobramycin-resistant bacterial strains but also those less susceptibleto the PrAMP. To a certain extent, this activity also extends to theshorter and otherwise poorly active fragment Bac7(1-15). Althoughthe mechanism that allows the conjugate to act when its individualcomponents do not is as yet unclear, results are very promising andsuggest this may be a way of resensitizing pathogens that have developedresistance to the antibiotic

Association of USF1 and APOA5 polymorphisms with familial combined hyperlipidemia in an Italian population.

Familial combined hyperlipidemia (FCH) is a polygenic and multifactorial disease characterized by a variable phenotype showing increased levels of triglycerides and/or cholesterol. The aim of this study was to identify single nucleotides (SNPs) in lipid-related genes associated with FCH. METHODS AND RESULTS: Twenty SNPs in lipid-related genes were studied in 142 control subjects and 165 FCH patients after excluding patients with mutations in the LDLR gene and patients with the E2/E2 genotype of APOE. In particular, we studied the 9996G > A (rs2073658) and 11235C > T (rs3737787) variants in the Upstream Stimulatory Factor 1 gene (USF1), and the -1131T > C (rs662799) and S19W (rs3135506) variants in the Apolipoprotein A-V gene (APOA5). We found that the frequencies of these variants differed between patients and controls and that are associated with different lipid profiles. At multivariate logistic regression SNP S19W in APOA5 remained significantly associated with FCH independently of age, sex, BMI, cholesterol and triglycerides. CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that the USF1 and APOA5 polymorphisms are associated with FCH and that the S19W SNP in the APOA5 gene is associated to the disease independently of total cholesterol, triglycerides and BMI. However, more extensive studies including other SNPs such as rs2516839 in USF1, are required

Estimating the resilience of, and targets for, a transport system using expert opinion

To ensure that transport infrastructure provides acceptable levels of service with respect to extreme events, the resilience of the infrastructure needs to be estimated and targets for it need to be set. Recent work in the European research project Future Proofing Strategies for Resilient Transport Networks against Extreme Events (Foresee) has shown how this can be done in situations with a wide range of available data, time frames for the estimation and expertise. This paper provides an example of how an infrastructure manager can use the guideline to estimate the resilience of, and set resilience targets for, an example transport system in a relatively short period of time, even in the case of limited expertise in all the relevant areas and limited knowledge and information on all the basic input variables. The example is fictive but realistic. It is based on a transport system consisting of a section of the A16 highway, in Italy, where a potential landslide could discharge enough material to damage road sections and bridges. The resilience is estimated using resilience indicators with differentiated weights, and the resilience targets are set using cost–benefit analysis, to identify the indicators to be improved first.This work has received funding from the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 769373 (Foresee project). This paper reflects only the authors’ views. The European Commission and Innovation and Networks Executive Agency are not responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein