High tide, low price? Flooding alerts and hotel prices in Venice

This research explores the effects of High Tide alerts on hotel prices in Venice, a city that is vulnerable to the impacts of extreme climate events due to its fragile ecosystem and a long history of floods in the city center. By analyzing and combining price data from Booking.com with publicly available information on tides and weather, this study uses regression discontinuity design to test for changes in hotel prices when tide levels reach a critical threshold. The results offer insights into the sensitivity of hotel prices to weather alerts and provide valuable information on the potential impact of climate change on Venice’s tourism-driven economy, with implications for the cost–benefit analysis of activating protective barriers for lagoon protection

A 3D Conditional Diffusion Model for Image Quality Transfer -- An Application to Low-Field MRI

Low-field (LF) MRI scanners (<1T) are still prevalent in settings with limited resources or unreliable power supply. However, they often yield images with lower spatial resolution and contrast than high-field (HF) scanners. This quality disparity can result in inaccurate clinician interpretations. Image Quality Transfer (IQT) has been developed to enhance the quality of images by learning a mapping function between low and high-quality images. Existing IQT models often fail to restore high-frequency features, leading to blurry output. In this paper, we propose a 3D conditional diffusion model to improve 3D volumetric data, specifically LF MR images. Additionally, we incorporate a cross-batch mechanism into the self-attention and padding of our network, ensuring broader contextual awareness even under small 3D patches. Experiments on the publicly available Human Connectome Project (HCP) dataset for IQT and brain parcellation demonstrate that our model outperforms existing methods both quantitatively and qualitatively. The code is publicly available at \url{https://github.com/edshkim98/DiffusionIQT}

Planck LFI flight model feed horns

this paper is part of the Prelaunch status LFI papers published on JINST: http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.proc5/jinst The Low Frequency Instrument is optically interfaced with the ESA Planck telescope through 11 corrugated feed horns each connected to the Radiometer Chain Assembly (RCA). This paper describes the design, the manufacturing and the testing of the flight model feed horns. They have been designed to optimize the LFI optical interfaces taking into account the tight mechanical requirements imposed by the Planck focal plane layout. All the eleven units have been successfully tested and integrated with the Ortho Mode transducers.Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in JINST. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The definitive publisher authenticated version is available online at 10.1088/1748-0221/4/12/T1200

Unanticipated Pseudocoarctation Highlights the Importance of Visualizing Aortic Arch Anatomy Before Transfemoral Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation

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The Planck-LFI flight model composite waveguides

The Low Frequency Instrument on board the PLANCK satellite is designed to give the most accurate map ever of the CMB anisotropy of the whole sky over a broad frequency band spanning 27 to 77 GHz. It is made of an array of 22 pseudo-correlation radiometers, composed of 11 actively cooled (20 K) Front End Modules (FEMs), and 11 Back End Modules (BEMs) at 300K. The connection between the two parts is made with rectangular Wave Guides. Considerations of different nature (thermal, electromagnetic and mechanical), imposed stringent requirements on the WGs characteristics and drove their design. From the thermal point of view, the WG should guarantee good insulation between the FEM and the BEM sections to avoid overloading the cryocooler. On the other hand it is essential that the signals do not undergo excessive attenuation through the WG. Finally, given the different positions of the FEM modules behind the focal surface and the mechanical constraints given by the surrounding structures, different mechanical designs were necessary. A composite configuration of Stainless Steel and Copper was selected to satisfy all the requirements. Given the complex shape and the considerable length (about 1.5-2 m), manufacturing and testing the WGs was a challenge. This work deals with the development of the LFI WGs, including the choice of the final configuration and of the fabrication process. It also describes the testing procedure adopted to fully characterize these components from the electromagnetic point of view and the space qualification process they underwent. Results obtained during the test campaign are reported and compared with the stringent requirements. The performance of the LFI WGs is in line with requirements, and the WGs were successfully space qualified.Comment: this paper is part of the Prelaunch status LFI papers published on JINST: http://www.iop.org/EJ/journal/-page=extra.proc5/jins