Dynamic and seismic health monitoring of a historic masonry tower

The paper presents some results of the continuous dynamic/seismic monitoring program carried out on the tallest historic tower in Mantua, Italy. This project follows an extensive diagnostic investigation aimed at assessing the structural condition of the tower after the Italian earthquakes of May 2012. A simple dynamic monitoring system was installed in the tower to evaluate the dynamic response especially to the expected sequence of far-field earthquakes and to check the possible evolution of the natural frequencies; the response to ambient excitation has been continuously collected in 1-hour records since late December 2012. The paper summarizes the results of the continuous dynamic monitoring for a period of 8 months, highlighting the effect of temperature on automatically identified natural frequencies, the dynamic response to few seismic events and the key role of permanent dynamic monitoring in the diagnosis of the investigated historic building

One-year dynamic monitoring of a historic tower: damage detection under changing environment

The paper summarizes the conceptual development of a vibration-based strategy suitable to the structural health monitoring of ancient masonry towers and exemplifies its application in the continuous dynamic monitoring of the tallest historic tower in Mantua, Italy. The presented approach is based on the installation of low-cost monitoring systems (consisting of few accelerometers and temperature sensors) and on the combined use of automated operational modal analysis, regression models to mitigate the environmental effects on identified natural frequencies and multivariate statistical tools to detect the occurrence of abnormal structural changes. The application of the adopted strategy to 15 months of continuously collected experimental data: (1) highlighted the effect of temperature on the automatically identified natural frequencies; (2) demonstrated the practical feasibility of damage detection methods based on natural frequency shifts; (3) provided a clear evidence of the possible key role of continuous dynamic monitoring in the preventive conservation of historic towers

One-year dynamic monitoring of a masonry tower

The paper presents some results of the continuous dynamic monitoring program carried out on the tallest historic tower in Mantua, Italy. This project follows an extensive diagnostic investigation aimed at assessing the structural condition of the tower after the Italian earthquakes of May 2012. A simple dynamic monitoring system was permanently installed in the upper part of the building and automatic modal identification was performed. The results allow to evaluate the effects of changing temperature on automatically identified natural frequencies, to verify the practical feasibility of damage detection methods based on natural frequencies shifts and provide clear evidence of the possible key role of continuous dynamic monitoring in the preventive conservation of historic towers

Stand-alone wearable system for ubiquitous real-time monitoring of muscle activation potentials

Wearable technology is attracting most attention in healthcare for the acquisition of physiological signals. We propose a stand-alone wearable surface ElectroMyoGraphy (sEMG) system for monitoring the muscle activity in real time. With respect to other wearable sEMG devices, the proposed system includes circuits for detecting the muscle activation potentials and it embeds the complete real-time data processing, without using any external device. The system is optimized with respect to power consumption, with a measured battery life that allows for monitoring the activity during the day. Thanks to its compactness and energy autonomy, it can be used outdoor and it provides a pathway to valuable diagnostic data sets for patients during their own day-life. Our system has performances that are comparable to state-of-art wired equipment in the detection of muscle contractions with the advantage of being wearable, compact, and ubiquitous

Efficacy and safety of rosuvastatin in the management of dyslipidemia

Rosuvastatin is a synthetic statin that represents an advance in the pharmacologic and clinical properties of statins. Relative to other statins, rosuvastatin possesses a greater number of binding interactions with HMG-CoA reductase and has a high affinity for the active site of the enzyme. As with other statins, serious adverse effects with rosuvastatin therapy are uncommon and primarily involve effects on the liver and skeletal muscle. The risk increases with increasing dosages and coadministration with other drugs interacting with the same metabolic pathway. The degree of LDL reduction is important to achieve the treatment goals suggested by international guidelines. Among the most potent statins, rosuvastatin is capable of getting the majority of patients to their LDL cholesterol goals. In addition, rosuvastatin has been found effective in reducing small-dense LDL, C-reactive protein and in increasing HDL cholesterol levels. Controlled clinical trials using vascular end-points have been performed. In particular, a study demonstrated that rosuvastatin therapy could slow progression and/or cause regression of carotid intima-media thickness over 2 years in middle-aged individuals with a low Framingham risk score (FRS) and mild to moderate subclinical atherosclerosis. A primary prevention study (JUPITER) was stopped before the programmed end of the study, because of excess benefit for high-risk individuals receiving rosuvastatin treatment. It is suggested that pronounced LDL reduction, in association with significant HDL cholesterol increase, are the bases of a marked preventive action of rosuvastatin. The results from JUPITER support the use of rosuvastatin for primary cardiovascular prevention, in overweight men and women, with near to normal LDL cholesterol and high CRP. There is now evidence of benefit from rosuvastatin treatment for a wide segment of the general population at intermediate cardiovascular risk. In absolute numbers, this segment represents the main source of cardiovascular events: on the basis of JUPITER results, it is expected that treatment target and potential candidates to statin therapy will be revaluated and redefined

Entanglement Generation and Dynamics for a Bose-Hubbard model in a Double-Well Potential

The study of entanglement between bosonic systems is of primary importance for establishing feasible resources needed for implementing quantum information protocols, both in their interacting atomic or photonic realizations. Atomic systems are particularly efficient in the production of large amounts of entanglement, providing higher information density than conventional qubit entangled states. Such increased quantum resources pave the way to novel fundamental tests of nature and efficient applications in quantum information, metrology and sensing. We consider a basic setup made up of two parties A and B, each one populated by a single level bosonic variable. The bosons are interacting and can hop between A and B, thus describing a two-site Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. We consider the generation of quantum states in several situations that cover the majority of physical realizations: ground state, finite temperature, unitary dynamics, dissipation through dephasing and loss of particles. The system is analyzed through truncated exact diagonalization, as a function of the microscopic parameters. The non separability of the obtained quantum states is estimated by means of the negativity, which has recently been proven to be a suitable measure of entanglement. Finally, we calculate lower bounds of the entanglement of formation, an indicator that quantifies the minimal amount of entanglement resources needed to build up such states.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure

Air Cooling and Dehumidification with a zeolite coated heat exchanger regenerated by Solar thermal energy

This paper presents some experimental results of a new device for low energy/low exergy air conditioning system. The device can realize both dehumidification and sensible cooling of external air, and it is designed for very low pressure drops, drastically reducing the electricity consumption for the driving fans. It is composed by a finned coil heat exchanger, coated with a SAPO-34 zeolite layer, that handles both heat and mass transfer in a single component. During the adsorption a cold water flow at 20 °C circulates through the coil, cooling the air and realizing in a single step a complete air-treatment. Hot water produced with evacuated solar collector is then used to regenerate the zeolite

Polynomial approximation and quadrature on geographic rectangles

Using some recent results on subperiodic trigonometric interpolation and quadrature, and the theory of admissible meshes for multivariate polynomial approximation, we study product Gaussian quadrature, hyperinterpolation and interpolation on some regions of dS,d ≥ 2. Such regions include caps, zones, slices and more generally spherical rectangles defined on S2 by longitude and (co)latitude (geographic rectangles). We provide the corresponding Matlab codes and discuss several numerical examples on S

Chapter Il cosmo di un signore padano del Quattrocento

The description of the “good death” and of the funeral of Giberto Sanvitale, count of Belforte, offers a vantage point to understand the nature and the extension of the political horizon of a member of the fifteenth century Lombard high landed nobility. This accurate and unique report highlights the relevance of personal, non-territorial ties and the importance of the organic relationship between city and countryside, strengthened by factional allegiance, in the material constitution of the lordship

Il cosmo di un signore padano del Quattrocento

ITALIANO: Il resoconto coevo della “buona morte” e del funerale di Giberto Sanvitale, conte di Belforte, costituisce un ottimo punto di osservazione per comprendere la natura e l’ampiezza dell’orizzonte politico di un rappresentante della maggiore aristocrazia territoriale lombarda del Quattrocento. Questa descrizione, accurata e unica nel suo genere per il contesto considerato, fa emergere la rilevanza dei legami personali e non territoriali e l’importanza del rapporto organico tra città e campagna, innervato dall’appartenenza fazionaria, nella costituzione materiale della signoria. / ENGLISH: The description of the “good death” and of the funeral of Giberto Sanvitale, count of Belforte, offers a vantage point to understand the nature and the extension of the political horizon of a member of the fifteenth century Lombard high landed nobility. This accurate and unique report highlights the relevance of personal, non-territorial ties and the importance of the organic relationship between city and countryside, strengthened by factional allegiance, in the material constitution of the lordship