Mobile awareness: Design for connectedness

This article describes our ongoing research project about design for behavior change, which is facilitated by Ubiquitous Computing technologies. In particular in this paper we discuss the potentiality of mobile devices to facilitate the mobility behavior change among people who are currently living at Turin, Italy. To this aim we illustrate our conceptual design of a mobile game, which is designed to facilitate mobility behavior change

Designing for User Confidence in Intelligent Environments

Intelligent environments aim at supporting and assisting users in their daily activities. Their reliability, i.e., the capability of correctly accomplishing the intended tasks and of limiting or avoiding damage in case of malfunctions, is essential as for any user-facing technology. One aspect of reliability, often neglected, is guaranteeing the consistency between system operation and user expectations, so that users may build confidence over the correct behavior of the system and its reaction to their actions. The paper will review the literature concerning methodologies and tools that directly involve users and have been specifically applied or adopted for intelligent environments, throughout the entire design flow – from requirements gathering to interface design. The paper will then propose, building on top of the previous analysis, a set of guidelines that system designers should follow to ensure user confidence in their intelligent environments

Dynamic ride sharing service: are users ready to adopt it?

Nowadays we are experiencing a shift of paradigm from ownership of goods to sharing goods and experiences. The “sharing economy” paradigm will change the way people experience everyday life in many sectors. In this paper we are focusing on the urban transportation experience presenting a user centric design of an experimental dynamic ridesharing service for Italian users, called VirtualBus [1]. The proposed service is based on a mobile application that allows people to get arrangement in real time for sharing car rides in an urban area, both as “driver” or “passenger”. A smart matching algorithm will provide, within a short time, the best matching between the driver and the passenger learning from users’ feedbacks and improving its suggestions overtime to better fulfill users’ expectations. The service was designed, prototyped and tested involving users in every step, starting from a vision board with the target Personas. Then, a first raw prototype of the mobile application was designed and tested during specific focus group sessions. During the focus groups users highlighted both the importance of defining rewarding and payment rules and some concerns about privacy and reliability of drivers and passengers. Moreover, a large scale questionnaire, with more than 500 respondents, was distributed with the focus on two big Italian cities, Turin and Rome. The questionnaire analysis gave many interesting insights about the city commuting habits and its results were used to enrich the previously designed Personas with the aim of enhancing real users’ scenarios. Next steps will involve real users on selected cities as a test-bed of both the technical solution and the users’ acceptability of a new way of experiencing the urban commuting

Identification and structural determination of the capsular polysaccharides from two Acinetobacter baumannii clinical isolates, MG1 and SMAL

The structures of the capsular polysaccharides (CPSs) of the two clinical isolates Acinetobacter baumannii SMAL and MG1 were elucidated. Hot phenol/water extractions of the dry biomasses, followed by enzymatic digestions and repeated ultracentrifugations led to the isolation of polysaccharides that were negative in Western blot analysis utilizing an anti-lipid A antibody, thus proving that they were not the LPS O-antigens but CPSs. Their structures were established on the basis of NMR spectroscopy and GC-MS analyses. The A. baumannii MG1 CPS consisted of a linear aminopolysaccharide with acyl substitution heterogeneity at the N-4 amino group of QuipN4N: 4)-alpha-D-GlcpNAc-(1 -> 4)-alpha-L-GalpNAcA-(1 -> 3)-beta-D-QuipNAc4NR-(1 -> R = -3-hydroxybutyrryl or acetyl. The repeating unit of the CPS produced by strain SMAL is a pentasaccharide, already reported for the O-antigen moiety from A. baumannii strain ATCC 17961: beta-D-GlcpNAc3NAcA-(1 down arrow 4) 6)-beta-D-Glcp-(1 -> 3)-beta-D-GalpNAc-(1 -> 3)-alpha-D-Galp-(1 -> 6)up arrow beta-D-GlcpNAc-(

True muonium resonant production at e+e−e^+e^- colliders with standard crossing angle

True muonium ($\mu^+\mu^-$) is the heaviest and smallest bound state not involving quantum chromodynamics, after true tauonium ($\tau^+\tau^-$) and mu-tauonium ($\mu^\pm\tau^\mp$). Unlike atoms containing $\tau$ particles, the muon lifetime is long enough to allow observation of true muonium (TM) decays and transitions. One of the proposed methods to observe the spin 1 fundamental state of TM, which has the smallest lifetime among TM spin 1 states, was to build an $e^+e^-$ collider with a large crossing angle ($\theta \sim 30^\circ$) in order to provide TM with a large boost and detect its decay vertex in $e^+ e^-$. The following paper will instead show that TM excited states ($n\geq2$) can be observed in relatively large quantities ($\mathcal{O}$(10)/month) at a feasible $e^+e^-$ collider with standard crossing angles, after setting their center-of-mass energy to the TM mass ($\sim2m_{\mu}=211.4$ MeV)

e-Learning e formazione universitaria nelle scienze mediche: indagine qualitativa su opinioni e aspettative di Docenti e Studenti

L’evoluzione degli strumenti dell’Information and Communication Technology rappresenta una sfida per la formazione universitaria nelle Scienze Mediche. Lo sviluppo di metodologie e-Learning in affiancamento alla didattica tradizionale risponde a bisogni formativi in evoluzione e alle nuove esigenze organizzative del contesto universitario.Introduction. The development of Information and Communication Technology is a challenge for university education in medical sciences. This study, sponsored and coordinated by the “Giovanni D’Addona” Remote Teaching Unit of the Sapienza – University of Rome, aims to provide useful indications for the implementation of e-Learning methodologies in medical sciences. Materials and methods. This qualitative study examined the opinions, attitudes and experiences of a sample of teachers, researchers and students of the Faculties of Medicine and Health Professions of the Sapienza - University of Rome. Focus groups, interviews and open-ended questions were used for data collection. A content analysis was performed with the aim of data reduction, naming data, obtaining analytical code and determining categories and themes. Results. The analysis revealed four main themes regarding the implementation of e-Learning methodologies in the study context. These were: advantages and potential of e-Learning, limitations, organizational constraints and prospects of e-Learning. Conclusions. In undergraduate medical education, traditional on-site learning is fundamental for clinical practice. The development of e-Learning methodologies allow to respond to changing educational needs of students and organizational requirements of the specific university context. The introduction of a blended learning approach requires organizational changes as well as modifications to the current teaching paradigms, with the involvement of professionals specialized in e-Learning methodologies

How future surgery will benefit from SARS-COV-2-related measures: a SPIGC survey conveying the perspective of Italian surgeons

COVID-19 negatively affected surgical activity, but the potential benefits resulting from adopted measures remain unclear. The aim of this study was to evaluate the change in surgical activity and potential benefit from COVID-19 measures in perspective of Italian surgeons on behalf of SPIGC. A nationwide online survey on surgical practice before, during, and after COVID-19 pandemic was conducted in March-April 2022 (NCT:05323851). Effects of COVID-19 hospital-related measures on surgical patients' management and personal professional development across surgical specialties were explored. Data on demographics, pre-operative/peri-operative/post-operative management, and professional development were collected. Outcomes were matched with the corresponding volume. Four hundred and seventy-three respondents were included in final analysis across 14 surgical specialties. Since SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, application of telematic consultations (4.1% vs. 21.6%; p < 0.0001) and diagnostic evaluations (16.4% vs. 42.2%; p < 0.0001) increased. Elective surgical activities significantly reduced and surgeons opted more frequently for conservative management with a possible indication for elective (26.3% vs. 35.7%; p < 0.0001) or urgent (20.4% vs. 38.5%; p < 0.0001) surgery. All new COVID-related measures are perceived to be maintained in the future. Surgeons' personal education online increased from 12.6% (pre-COVID) to 86.6% (post-COVID; p < 0.0001). Online educational activities are considered a beneficial effect from COVID pandemic (56.4%). COVID-19 had a great impact on surgical specialties, with significant reduction of operation volume. However, some forced changes turned out to be benefits. Isolation measures pushed the use of telemedicine and telemetric devices for outpatient practice and favored communication for educational purposes and surgeon-patient/family communication. From the Italian surgeons' perspective, COVID-related measures will continue to influence future surgical clinical practice

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M>70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0<e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level