Retrieval of the ocean wave spectrum in open and thin ice covered ocean waters from ERS Synthetic Aperture Radar images

This paper concerns with the task of retrieving ocean wave spectra from imagery provided by space-borne SAR systems such as that on board ERS satellite. SAR imagery of surface wave fields traveling into open ocean and into thin sea ice covers composed of frazil and pancake icefields is considered. The major purpose is to gain insight on how the spectral changes can be related to sea ice properties of geophysical interest such as the thickness. Starting from SAR image cross spectra computed from Single Look Complex (SLC) SAR images, the ocean wave spectrum is retrieved using an inversion procedure based on the gradient descent algorithm. The capability of this method when applied to satellite SAR sensors is investigated. Interest in the SAR image cross spectrum exploitation is twofold: first, the directional properties of the ocean wave spectra are retained; second, external wave information needed to initialize the inversion procedure may be greatly reduced using only information included in the SAR image cross spectrum itself. The main drawback is that the wind waves spectrum could be partly lost and its spectral peak wave number underestimated. An ERS-SAR SLC image acquired on April 10, 1993 over the Greenland Sea was selected as test image. A pair of windows that include open-sea only and sea ice cover, respectively, were selected. The inversions were carried out using different guess wave spectra taken from SAR image cross spectra. Moreover, care was taken to properly handle negative values eventually occurring during the inversion runs. This results in a modification of the gradient descending technique that is required if a non-negative solution of the wave spectrum is searched for. Results are discussed in view of the possibility of SAR data to detect ocean wave dispersion as a means for the retrieval of ice thickness

Comparison of MODIS and ETA profiles of atmospheric parameters in coastal zones with radiosonde data

The quality of atmospheric profiles gathered by the spaceborne Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard the Terra platform and those predicted by the ETA atmospheric circulation model are assessed against corresponding radiosonde (RS)measurements. The analysis is carried out on a statistical basis taking as reference the radiosoundings collected at two coastal stations, namely Ajaccio (France) and Pratica di Mare (Italy), during the spring 2000. The examined days were characterized by smooth and slow variations of the atmospheric conditions so that a temporal lag up to about three hours between RS and MODIS profiles could be considered for comparison purposes. Both ETA predictions and MODIS retrievals compare well with RS data and their relative agreement is good. Although, as expected, the profiles of the analyzed quantities, namely temperature and moisture for both MODIS and ETA outputs and horizontal wind components predicted by ETA model, could not follow the largest fluctuations measured by RS, their averages are reproduced with a satisfactory degree of reliability. These results encourage the perspective to exploit remote measurements from the MODIS sensor of atmospheric temperature and water vapour as input to operative circulation models, such as ETA, for reliable forecasts and detailed monitoring on global scale of the atmospheric structure and dynamics

Synergic use of SAR imagery and high resolution atmospheric model to estimate marine wind fields : an application in presence of an atmospheric gravity wave episode.

A study aimed at retrieving sea surface wind fields of semi-enclosed basins from combined use of SAR imagery and a high resolution mesoscale numerical atmospheric model, is presented. Two consecutive ERS-2 SAR frames and a set of NOAA/AVHRR and MODIS images acquired over the North Tyrrhenian Sea on March 30, 2000 were used for the analysis. SAR wind speeds and directions at 10 m above the sea surface were retrieved using the semi-empirical backscatter models CMOD4 and CMOD-IFREMER. Surface wind vectors predicted by the meteorological ETA model were exploited as guess input to SAR wind inversion procedure. ETA is a three-dimensional, primitive equation, grid-point model currently operational at the National Centers for Environmental Prediction of the U.S. National Weather Service. The model was adapted to run with a resolution up to about 4.0 Km. It was found that the inversion methodology was not able to resolve wind speed modulations due to the action of an atmospheric gravity wave, called “lee wave”, which occurred in the analyzed area. A simple atmospheric wave propagation model was thus used to account for the SAR observed surface wind speed modulation. Synergy with ETA model outputs was further exploited in simulations where atmospheric parameters up-wind the atmospheric wave were provided as input to the lee wave propagation model

Towards a social robot as interface for tourism recommendations

The popularity of social robots is steadily increasing, mainly due to the interesting impact they have in several application domains. In this paper, we propose the use of Pepper Robot as an interface of a recommender system for tourism. In particular, we used the robot to interact with the users and to provide them with personalized recommendations about hotels, restaurants, and points of interest in the area. The personalization mechanism encoded in the social robot relies on soft biometrics traits automatically recognized by the robot, as age and gender, user interests and personal facets. All these data are used to feed a neural network that returns as output the most suitable recommendations for the target user. To evaluate the effectiveness of the interaction driven by a social robot, we carried out a user study whose goal was to evaluate: (1) how the robot affects the perceived accuracy of the recommendations; (2) how the user experience and the engagement vary by interacting with a social robot instead of a classic web application. Even if there is a large room for improvement, mainly due to the poor speech recognizer integrated in the Pepper, the results showed that the robot can strongly attract people, thanks to its presence and interaction capabilities. These findings encouraged us in performing a larger field study to test the approach in the wild and to understand whether it can increase the acceptance of recommendations in real environments

Social robots in cognitive interventions. Advances, problems and perspectives

Social Assistive Robots are being used in therapeutic interventions for elderly people affected by cognitive impairments. The present paper reports our research lines aiming at investigating the role of a social robot in aiding therapists during cognitive stimulation sessions for elders with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Mild Dementia. We review our studies whose results show that social robots have been positively accepted by the seniors in different experiments. Participants were very attentive and involved in the sessions’ tasks and their experience was mainly positive. Our data suggest that this technology can be a valid tool to support psychotherapists in cognitive stimulation interventions emphasizing the need of multidisciplinary approaches combining assessment of behavior and robotics

Infection caused by Sporothrix schenckii: an autochthonous case in Bari, Southern Italy

An autochthonous case of lymphocutaneous sporotrichosis caused by Sporothrix schenckii is reported. The patient developed skin lesions localized along the lymphatics that appeared after he suffered an injury while collecting wicker canes in marshy water. The fungus was identified as Sporothrix schenckii by MALDI-TOF and sequencing. Phylogenetic analysis was also performed. Low MIC values were detected for all tested echinocandins and azoles except for fluconazole. The patient was treated with itraconazole without significant improvement. A regression of lesions was observed after 3 months of therapy with voriconazole. Few cases of sporotrichosis have been reported in Europe. However, several cases of sporotrichosis have been described in Italy. The incidence of sporotrichosis in Italy may be underestimated and microbiologists, and clinicians must be aware of this fungal infection

Incidence of pneumomediastinum in COVID-19: A single-center comparison between 1st and 2nd wave

In this study, we compared the incidence of pneumomediastinum in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients during the ascending phases of the 1st and 2nd epidemic waves. Crude incidence was higher during the 2nd wave at a quasi-significant level (0.68/1000 vs. 2.05/1000 patient-days, p = 0.05). When restricting the analysis to patients who developed pneumomediastinum during noninvasive ventilation, the difference became clearly significant (0.17/1000 vs 1.36/1000 patient-days, p = 0.039). At logistic regression, predisposing factors (p = 0.031), and COVID-19 radiological severity (p = 0.019) were independently associated with pneumomediastinum. Mortality in patients with pneumomediastinum was 87.5%. However, pneumomediastinum seemed to be related to a generally worse disease presentation in hospitalized patients during the 2nd wave, rather than to a separate pattern of disease. (C) 2021 The Japanese Respiratory Society. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Microbiology and Clinical Outcome of Hospital-Acquired Respiratory Infections in an Italian Teaching Hospital: A Retrospective Study

The burden, microbial etiology and clinical impact of hospital-acquired respiratory infections (HARIs) were determined at an Italian teaching hospital over a 12-month period. For this purpose, overall ordinary hospitalizations >= 2 days of subjects over 18 years old with discharge from 1 January 2018 to 31 December 2018 were examined by cross-referencing demographic and clinical data from hospital discharge forms with microbiological data from the computer system of the Microbiology Unit. We identified 329 individuals with HARIs (96 females and 233 males; median age 70 years, range 18-93), who represented 1/4 of the total hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) in the period. The inpatient setting was medical and surgical in similar proportions (169 vs. 160, respectively) and the mean hospital stay was 38.9 +/- 33.6 days. One hundred and forty patients (42.6% of the total sample) were suffering from one or more chronic diseases. A total of 581 microorganisms (82 antibiotic-resistant and 499 non-resistant) were detected in HARI patients. The most common isolated species were Staphylococcus aureus (16.7%), Klebsiella pneumoniae (13.3%), Pseudomonas spp. (12.6%) and Acinetobacter baumannii (10.5%), followed by Enterobacter spp. (5.3%), Escherichia coli (5.2%) and Enterococcus spp. (4.8%). One hundred and sixty-seven individuals (49.0% of the total) had polymicrobial infections. One hundred thirty-one patients (39.8% of the total) underwent endotracheal intubation and mechanical ventilation and 62.6% of them died, compared to 17.7% of the non-intubated patients. Multivariable analysis confirmed a positive correlation between death and increased age (p = 0.05), surgical MDC (p = 0.007), number of microorganisms over the sample mean (p = 0.001), the presence of chronic diseases (p = 0.046), and intubation and mechanical ventilation (p < 0.0001). A positive correlation between intubation and antibiotic-resistant organisms (p = 0.003) was also found. HARIs are still a major public health problem and require constant surveillance due to their severe clinical outcome

SIR-C/X-SAR data calibration and ground truth campaign over the NASA-CB1 test-site

During the Space Shuttle Endeavour mission in October 1994, a remote-sensing campaign was carried out with the objectives of both radiometric and polarimetric calibration and ground truth data acquisition of bare soils. This paper presents the results obtained in the experiment. Polarimetric cross-talk and channel imbalance values, as well as radiometric calibration parameters, have been found to be within the science requirements for SAR images. Regarding ground truth measurements, a wide spread in the height rms values and correlation lengths has been observed, which has motivated a critical revisiting of surface parameters descriptors