Synchro-push: A new production control paradigm

The paper aims at proposing a new production control paradigm, the Synchro-push, that offers a step forward with respect to the traditional push and pull production paradigms as for plant re-configurability power and quick reaction to demand changes: in fact, theoretically, it offers the advantages of the two traditional approaches without suffering their drawbacks. This could be of advantage for any manufacturing company and especially for SMEs (Small-Medium Enterprises), acting as a support against worldwide competition. The paper presents a brief history of the evolution of the push and pull approaches, the comparison between them and among the different alternatives that have been proposed in literature for their implementation. It presents the new approach, its theory and the subsequent industrial implications. The new approach is now made possible by the development of innovative smart technologies that allow the close-to-real-time decision making in scheduling and a higher level of modularity in the plant

Miroir:...l’autre c’est moi: um estudo sobre a multidimensionalidade do gesto musical

O oboé é um instrumento que, devido às suas especificidades, exige um controle psicofisiológico que limita as capacidades expressivas do músico intérprete durante a performance. Apesar de um relativo consenso na literatura do instrumento que sustenta essa afirmação, ainda são poucas as propostas que visam dar uma resposta ao problema aqui apresentado. Mirroir… L’autre c’est moi é um projeto de criação artística onde o autor propõe expandir os recursos expressivos na prática de música escrita para oboé com o auxílio de um ator mimo que constrói a sua performance com base na impressão subjetiva partilhada pelo oboísta, revelando assim uma dimensão do imaginário do mesmo que não está acessível ao público. Neste sentido, o presente documento de tese descreve o estudo técnico-artístico envolvido na elaboração de uma releitura em contexto de performance cénica das duas obras que compõem este projeto - Six metamorphoses para oboé solo escrita por Benjamin Britten e Rite de la Lune de Edward Salim Michaël – com base numa estratégia de comunicação gestual desenvolvida no âmbito do presente trabalho. Esta estratégia permite ao músico partilhar as suas impressões subjetivas com o ator mimo. A estratégia de comunicação gestual aqui descrita, bem como a criação artística final, são uma contribuição para a performance e estudo do oboé, uma vez que lançam bases para novas possibilidades performativas baseadas na articulação e colaboração com outras expressões artísticas onde a dicotomia corpo e subjetividade é também problematizada.The oboe is an instrument that, due to its specificities, requires a psychophysiological control that limits the expressive abilities of the performing musician during the performance. Despite a relative consensus in the literature on the instrument that supports this statement, there are still few proposals that aim to provide an answer to the problem presented here. Mirroir…L'autre c'est moi is an artistic creation project where the author proposes to expand the expressive resources in the practice of written music for the oboe with the help of a mime actor who builds his performance based on the subjective impression shared by the oboist, thus revealing a dimension of his imagination that is not accessible to the public. In this sense, this thesis document describes the technical-artistic study involved in the elaboration of a reinterpretation in the context of scenic performance of the two works that make up this project - Six metamorphoses for solo oboe written by Benjamin Britten and Rite de la Lune by Edward Salim Michaël – based on a gestural communication strategy developed within the scope of this work. This strategy allows the musician to share his subjective impressions with the mime actor. The gestural communication strategy described here, as well as the final artistic creation, are a contribution to the performance and study of the oboe, as they lay the foundation for new performative possibilities based on the articulation and collaboration with other artistic expressions where the body and subjectivity dichotomy is also problematized.Programa Doutoral em Músic

Go-green manufacturing holons: a step towards sustainable manufacturing operations control

Despite their potential benefits in the context of sustainable manufacturing operations, holonic and multi-agent architectures are still not designed methodologically to support this major societal and environmental stake. To fill the gap, the generic concept of go-green manufacturing holon is proposed. The idea is to incite researchers to develop sustainability-oriented manufacturing operations control architectures, being holonic or multi-agents, and to provide them with a usable generic concept easy to appropriate, particularize and implement. An illustration of the concept is proposed as well as its widening in the context of circular economy.Trentesaux, D.; Giret Boggino, AS. (2015). Go-green manufacturing holons: a step towards sustainable manufacturing operations control. Manufacturing letters. 5:29-33. doi:10.1016/j.mfglet.2015.07.003S2933

Role of ontologies for CPS implementation in manufacturing

Cyber Physical Systems are an evolution of embedded systems featuring a tight combination of collaborating computational elements that control physical entities. CPSs promise a great potential of innovation in many areas including manufacturing and production. This is because we obtain a very powerful, flexible, modular infrastructure allowing easy (re) configurability and fast ramp-up of manufacturing applications by building a manufacturing system with modular mechatronic components (for machining, transportation and storage) and embedded intelligence, by integrating them into a system, through a network connection. However, when building such kind of architectures, the way to supply the needed domain knowledge to real manufacturing applications arises as a problem to solve. In fact, a CPS based architecture for manufacturing is made of smart but independent manufacturing components without any knowledge of the role they have to play together in the real world of manufacturing applications. Ontologies can supply such kind of knowledge, playing a very important role in CPS for manufacturing. The paper deals with this intriguing theme, also presenting an implementation of this approach in a research project for the open automation of manufacturing systems, in which the power of CPS is complemented by the support of an ontology of the manufacturing domain

Early Skin-to-Skin Contact in Preterm Infants: Is It Safe? An Italian Experience

Background: Skin-to-skin contact (SSC) is one of the four components of kangaroo care (KC) and is also a valued alternative to incubators in low-income countries. SSC has also become a standard of care in high-income countries because of its short- and long-term benefits and its positive effect on infant growth and neurodevelopmental outcome. However, barriers in the implementation of SSC, especially with preterm infants, are common in NICUs because parents and health care professionals can perceive it as potentially risky for the clinical stability of preterm infants. Previous studies have assessed safety before and during SSC by monitoring vital parameters during short-time intervals. Aims: To demonstrate the safety of early SSC in preterm infants during at least 90 min intervals. Design: Prospective observational monocentric study. Methods: Preterm infants born between June 2018 and June 2020 with a gestational age of ≤33 weeks and a birth weight of <2000 g were monitored while performing an SSC session during the first three weeks of life. Infants with necrotizing enterocolitis, sepsis, and congenital malformations on mechanical ventilation or with more than five apneas in the hour before SSC were excluded. Continuous oxygen saturation (SaO2), heart rate (HR), and respiratory rate (RR) were registered during an SSC session and in the hour before. The minimum duration of an SSC session was 90 min. Information regarding postmenstrual age (PMA), body weight, respiratory support, presence of a central venous catheter and the onset of sepsis within 72 h after a session was collected. Two physicians, blinded to infant conditions and the period of analysis (before or during SSC), evaluated desaturation episodes (SaO2 < 85%, >15 s), bradycardia (HR < 100, >15 s) and apneas (pause in breathing > 20 s associated with desaturation and/or bradycardia). A Wilcoxon rank sum test was used for the statistical analysis. Results: In total, 83 episodes of SSC were analyzed for a total of 38 infants. The mean gestational age at birth was 29 weeks (range 23–33 weeks). Median PMA, days of life, and body weight at SSC were 31 weeks (range 25–34 weeks), 10 days (range 1–20 days), and 1131 g (range 631–2206 g), respectively. We found that 77% of infants were on respiratory support and 47% of them had a central venous catheter (umbilical or peripherally inserted central catheter) during SSC. The total duration of desaturation, bradycardia, and the number of apneas were not statistically different during the SSC session and the hour before. No catheter dislocation or ruptures were reported. Conclusions: These findings highlighted the safety of early SSC in preterm infants and the possibility of performing it in an intensive care setting in the first weeks of life. In addition, these findings should reassure health care professionals offering this practice as a standard of care. SSC plays a key role in the care of preterm infants due to its short- and long-term positive benefits, and it deserves to be increasingly offered to infants and their parents

Enteroviral Infections in the First Three Months of Life

Enteroviruses (EVs) are an important source of infection in the paediatric age, with most cases concerning the neonatal age and early infancy. Molecular epidemiology is crucial to understand the circulation of main serotypes in a specific area and period due to their extreme epidemiological variability. The diagnosis of EVs infection currently relies on the detection of EVs RNA in biological samples (usually cerebrospinal fluid and plasma, but also throat swabs and feces) through a poly-merase chain reaction assay. Although EVs infections usually have a benign course, they sometimes become life threatening, especially when symptoms develop in the first few days of life. Mortality is primarily associated with myocarditis, acute hepatitis, and multi-organ failure. Neurodevelopmental sequelae have been reported following severe infections with central nervous system involvement. Unfortunately, at present, the treatment of EVs infections is mainly supportive. The use of specific antiviral agents in severe neonatal infections has been reported in single cases or studies includ-ing few neonates. Therefore, further studies are needed to confirm the efficacy of these drugs in clinical practice

Sudden Unexpected Postnatal Collapse and Therapeutic Hypothermia: What’s Going On?

Sudden unexpected postnatal collapse (SUPC) is a rare event, potentially associated with catastrophic consequences. Since the beginning of the 2000s, therapeutic hypothermia (TH) has been proposed as a treatment for asphyxiated neonates after SUPC. However, only a few studies have reported the outcome of SUPC after TH. The current study presents the long-term neurodevelopmental outcome of four cases of SUPC treated with TH in a single Italian center. Furthermore, we reviewed the previous literature concerning 49 cases of SUPC treated with TH. Among 53 total cases (of whom four occurred in our center), 15 (28.3%) died before discharge from the NICU. A neurodevelopmental follow-up was available only for 21 (55.3%) out of the 38 surviving cases, and seven infants developed neurodevelopmental sequelae. TH should be considered in neonates with asphyxia after SUPC. However, SUPC is a rare event, and there is a lack of comparative clinical data to establish the risk/benefit of TH after SUPC with different degrees of asphyxia. Analysis of large cohorts of newborns with SUPC, whether treated with TH or untreated, are needed in order to better identify infants who should undergo TH

Glymphatic clearance estimated using diffusion tensor imaging along perivascular spaces is reduced after traumatic brain injury and correlates with plasma neurofilament light, a biomarker of injury severity

The glymphatic system is a perivascular fluid clearance system, most active during sleep, considered important for clearing the brain of waste products and toxins. Glymphatic failure is hypothesized to underlie brain protein deposition in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease. Preclinical evidence suggests that a functioning glymphatic system is also essential for recovery from traumatic brain injury, which involves release of debris and toxic proteins that need to be cleared from the brain. In a cross-sectional observational study, we estimated glymphatic clearance using diffusion tensor imaging along perivascular spaces, an MRI-derived measure of water diffusivity surrounding veins in the periventricular region, in 13 non-injured controls and 37 subjects who had experienced traumatic brain injury ∼5 months previously. We additionally measured the volume of the perivascular space using T2-weighted MRI. We measured plasma concentrations of neurofilament light chain, a biomarker of injury severity, in a subset of subjects. Diffusion tensor imaging along perivascular spaces index was modestly though significantly lower in subjects with traumatic brain injury compared with controls when covarying for age. Diffusion tensor imaging along perivascular spaces index was significantly, negatively correlated with blood levels of neurofilament light chain. Perivascular space volume did not differ in subjects with traumatic brain injury as compared with controls and did not correlate with blood levels of neurofilament light chain, suggesting it may be a less sensitive measure for injury-related perivascular clearance changes. Glymphatic impairment after traumatic brain injury could be due to mechanisms such as mislocalization of glymphatic water channels, inflammation, proteinopathy and/or sleep disruption. Diffusion tensor imaging along perivascular spaces is a promising method for estimating glymphatic clearance, though additional work is needed to confirm results and assess associations with outcome. Understanding changes in glymphatic functioning following traumatic brain injury could inform novel therapies to improve short-term recovery and reduce later risk of neurodegeneration