GASTROMANIA ON ITALIAN TV

By turning on the TV, at any time of the day or night, one can comeacross programs in which food is the undisputed protagonist. Actually, thepresence of food on TV is not a contemporary phenomenon, but it goesback to the origins of television. Over time, the way of narrating food hasbeen transformed, as well as the role attributed to it and the values (gastronomicand social) associated to it.In this paper, after having traced a historical overview of Italian foodtelevision programming, we focus on the analysis of four recent programs.The objective is to understand how settings, rhythmic and temporal scansion,and the distribution of roles among the various actors involved configurenarratives with well-structured mechanisms and convey differentways of understanding cooking, the role of the chef, and the relationshipwith the audience at home

Mixology e creazioni elementali. Trasformazioni semiotiche della materia liquida

The paper focuses on the art of mixology, taking into consideration the transformations of matter that ingredients go through in their preparation, on the basis of an analysis of the recipe books dedicated to the topic. We will begin by questioning the meaning of the term cocktail and will continue by identifying the elementary composition of a drink to then focus on four aspects: 1) operations on the ingredients: the creation of a cocktail involves the execution of actions that can be described according to the terminology used by Bastide (1987); 2) material characteristics of the drink: different mixing techniques produce different effects in terms of colourations, consistencies, kinds of drinks produced; 3) intersubjectivity/interobjectivity: from production to tasting, several subjects and objects intervene and they are linked to each other in chains of relations definable in attantial terms; 4) enunciational subjects: the mixologist and the taster are required to master specific gestural syntagmas that produce further materiality effects

In-Cylinder Pressure Estimation from Rotational Speed Measurements via Extended Kalman Filter

Real-time estimation of the in-cylinder pressure of combustion engines is crucial to detect failures and improve the performance of the engine control system. A new estimation scheme is proposed based on the Extended Kalman Filter, which exploits measurements of the engine rotational speed provided by a standard phonic wheel sensor. The main novelty lies in a parameterization of the combustion pressure, which is generated by averaging experimental data collected in different operating points. The proposed approach is validated on real data from a turbocharged compression ignition engine, including both nominal and off-nominal working conditions. The experimental results show that the proposed technique accurately reconstructs the pressure profile, featuring a fit performance index exceeding 90% most of the time. Moreover, it can track changes in the engine operating conditions as well as detect the presence of cylinder-to-cylinder variations

Optimal Management of Energy Communities Hosting a Fleet of Electric Vehicles

In this paper, we study the problem of managing an energy community hosting a fleet of electric vehicles for rent. On the day-ahead, service requests of electric vehicles are submitted to the community. Then, the optimal request-to-vehicle assignment has to be found, as well as the optimal charging schedule of vehicle batteries. A suitable model is presented and included in an existing energy community architecture. The overall community management problem is formulated as a bilevel model, featuring two nested optimization problems. The optimal request-to-vehicle assignment requires the solution of a mixed-integer linear program. To reduce the computational complexity, a heuristic solution to the assignment problem is presented. Numerical results show that the participation in the community grants a remarkable reduction of the electric vehicle charging cost. The adoption of the heuristic assignment solution provides a dramatic reduction of the computation time required to solve the bilevel model. At the same time, the level of suboptimality introduced appears to be negligible, being less than 1% in most of the considered cases

Upper Body Pose Estimation Using Wearable Inertial Sensors and Multiplicative Kalman Filter

Estimating the limbs pose in a wearable way may benefit multiple areas such as rehabilitation, teleoperation, human-robot interaction, gaming, and many more. Several solutions are commercially available, but they are usually expensive or not wearable/portable. We present a wearable pose estimation system (WePosE), based on inertial measurements units (IMUs), for motion analysis and body tracking. Differently from camera-based approaches, the proposed system does not suffer from occlusion problems and lighting conditions, it is cost effective and it can be used in indoor and outdoor environments. Moreover, since only accelerometers and gyroscopes are used to estimate the orientation, the system can be used also in the presence of iron and magnetic disturbances. An experimental validation using a high precision optical tracker has been performed. Results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Futuro passato

The volume propose a collection that reflects on what an event is and in what how temporality is schematized, so as to make it humanly understandable, manageable, thinkable. Covid-19 was, in this sense, just a great accelerator, a particularly caseinteresting about "temporal subversion"

Non invasive tools for the diagnosis of liver cirrhosis

Liver cirrhosis (LC), the end stage of many forms of chronic hepatitis of different etiologies is a diffuse process characterized by fibrosis and the conversion of normal liver architecture into structurally abnormal nodules surrounded by annular fibrosis. This chronic progressive clinical condition, leads to liver cell failure and portal hypertension, which can favour the onset of hepatocellular carcinoma. Defining the phase of the natural history is crucial for therapeutic choice and prognosis. Liver biopsy is currently considered the best available standard of reference but it has some limits, so alternative tools have been developed to substitute liver biopsy when assessing liver fibrosis. Serum markers offer a cost-effective alternative to liver biopsy being less invasive and theoretically without complications. They can be classified into direct and indirect markers which may be used alone or in combination to produce composite scores. Diagnostic imaging includes a number of instruments and techniques to estimate liver fibrosis and cirrhosis like ultrasound (US), US Doppler, contrast enhanced US and Elastography. US could be used for the diagnosis of advanced LC while is not able to evaluate progression of fibrosis, in this case Elastography is more reliable. This review aims to revise the most recent data from the literature about non invasive methods useful in defining liver fibrosis

An unusual Erdheim-Chester disease with orbital involvement: A case report

Erdheim-Chester disease is a rare non-Langerhans cell histiocytosis with multiorgan involvement and a specific tropism for perivascular and fatty connective tissue, of unclear origin, with poor response to therapy. Its identification is difficult because of the variable clinical presentation and its lack of knowledge. We report the case of a 63-years-old woman, with a history of bilateral orbital pseudotumor, who comes to our attention because of progressively worsening asthenia, vomiting and systemic inflammation. Total body computerized tomography scan showed a volumetric increase of choroid plexus of the temporal horn of the left lateral ventricle, presence of solid retrobulbar tissue at the level of both maxillary sinuses, lung fibrosis, and retroperitoneal and peri-aortic infiltration. The association of these signs addressed to a diagnosis of Erdheim-Chester disease. Thus, although extremely rare, the diagnosis of Erdheim-Chester disease must be considered in the case of bilateral retro-orbital tumors and multisystemic involvement