SHIP MOTION SHORT TERM TIME DOMAIN SIMULATOR AND ITS APPLICATION TO COSTA CONCORDIA EMERGENCY MANOEUVRES JUST BEFORE THE JANUARY 2012 ACCIDENT

In this paper we will present a simple but reliable methodology for short term prediction of a cruise ship behaviour during manoeuvres. The methodology is quite general and could be applied to any kind of ship, because it does not require the prior knowledge of any structural or mechanical parameter of the ship. It is based only on the results of manoeuvrability data contained in the Manoeuvring Booklet, which in turn is filled out after sea trials of the ship performed before his delivery to the owner. We developed this method to support the investigations around the Costa Concordia shipwreck, which happened near the shores of Italy in January 2012. It was then validated against the data recorded in the “black box” of the ship, from which we have been able to extract an entire week of voyage data before the shipwreck. The aim was investigating the possibility of avoiding the impact by performing an evasive manoeuvre (as ordered by the Captain some seconds before the impact, but allegedly misunderstood by the helmsman). The preliminary validation step showed a good matching between simulated and real values (course and heading of the ship) for a time interval of a few minutes. The fact that the method requires only the results registered in the VDR (Voyage Data Recorder) during sea trial tests, makes it very useful for several applications. Among them, we can cite forensic investigation, the development of components for autopilots, the prediction of the effects of a given manoeuvre in shallow water, the “a posteriori” verification of the correctness of a given manoeuvre and the use in training simulators for ship pilots and masters

Vowel height and velum position in German: Insights from a real-time magnetic resonance imaging study

Velum position was analysed as a function of vowel height in German tense and lax vowels preceding a nasal or oral consonant. Findings from previous research suggest an interdependence between vowel height and the degree of velum lowering, with a higher velum during high vowels and a more lowered velum during low vowels. In the current study, data were presented from 33 native speakers of Standard German who were measured via non-invasive high quality real-time magnetic resonance imaging. The focus was on exploring the spatiotemporal extent of velum lowering in tense and lax /a, i, o, ø/, which was done by analysing velum movement trajectories over the course of VN and VC sequences in CVNV and CVCV sequences by means of functional principal component analysis. Analyses focused on the impact of the vowel category and vowel tenseness. Data indicated that not only the position of the velum was affected by these factors but also the timing of velum closure. Moreover, it is argued that the effect of vowel height was to be better interpreted in terms of the physiological constriction location of vowels, i.e., the specific tongue position rather than phonetic vowel height

Assessment of Patients' Perception of Telemedicine Services Using the Service User Technology Acceptability Questionnaire

Introduction: The purpose of this paper is to assess if similar telemedicine services integrated in the management of different chronic diseases are acceptable and well perceived by patients or if there are any negative perceptions. Theory and methods: Participants suffering from different chronic diseases were enrolled in Veneto Region and gathered into clusters. Each cluster received a similar telemedicine service equipped with different disease-specific measuring devices. Participants were patients with diabetes (n = 163), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (n = 180), congestive heart failure (n = 140) and Cardiac Implantable Electronic Devices (n = 1635). The Service User Technology Acceptability Questionnaire (SUTAQ) was initially translated, culturally adapted and pretested and subsequently used to assess patients’ perception of telemedicine. Data were collected after 3 months and after 12 months from the beginning of the intervention. Data for patients with implantable devices was collected only at 12 months. Results: Results at 12 months for all clusters are similar and assessed a positive perception of telemedicine. The SUTAQ results for clusters 2 (diabetes), 5 (COPD) and 7 (CHF) after 3 months of intervention were confirmed after 12 months. Conclusions: Telemedicine was perceived as a viable addition to usual care. A positive perception for telemedicine services isn’t a transitory effect, but extends over the course of time

Blurriness in Live Forensics: An Introduction.

The Live Forensics discipline aims at answering basic questions related to a digital crime, which usually involves a computer-based system. The investigation should be carried out with the very goal to establish which processes were running, when they were started and by whom, what specific activities those processes were doing and the state of active network connections. Besides, a set of tools needs to be launched on the running system by altering, as a consequence of the Locard’s exchange principle [2], the system’s memory. All the methodologies for the live forensics field proposed until now have a basic, albeit important, weakness, which is the inability to quantify the perturbation, or blurriness, of the system’s memory of the investigated computer. This is the very last goal of this paper: to provide a set of guidelines which can be effectively used for measuring the uncertainty of the collected volatile memory on a live system being investigated

SIM and USIM Filesystem: a Forensics Perspective

The main purpose of this paper is to describe the real filesys- tem of SIM and USIM cards, enlightening what the offi cial standard reference does not say. By analyzing the full filesystem of such embedded devices, it is possible to find a lot of undocumented files usable to conceal sensitive and arbitrary information that are unrecoverable with the stan- dard tools normally used in a forensic field. In order to understand how it is possible to use a SIM/USIM for data hiding purposes, the paper will present a tool capable of extracting the entire observable memory of these devices to- gether with the effective filesystem structure. Further, some practical examples regarding the data hiding procedure as a proof of concept will be analyzed and discussed