Metropolitan MaaS and DRT Schemes: are they paving the way towards a more inclusive and resilient urban environment?

Mobility-as-a-Service and Demand-Responsive-Transport schemes are promoting progressively a user-centered approach, made of modularity, flexibility and tailor-made travel experience, and pandemic emergency has furthermore enhanced this new way of thinking, thus representing an unprecedented occasion to develop a new paradigm for a more sustainable and resilient transport system, thus ensuring a greater level of social and territorial inclusion beyond traditional urban borders and outdated distinctions of targeted services for particular users' categories. This paper discusses the main features of MaaS and DRT schemes in order to assess if they could be able to cope with Universal Design principles and to improve metropolitan accessibility accordingly to the urgent request for social and territorial inclusion as sustainable development pre-requisites, made by different stakeholders in the international and European debate (see UNO SDGs or EU Cork Declaration 2.0), and re-launched by many national initiatives (SNAI for Italy, Espana Vacìa for Spain…). To re-think metropolitan mobility as a service that can be shaped accordingly to user's needs and to redefine transport supply as a complex puzzle made by different and complementary services could represent a unique opportunity to overcome one of traditional public transport dramatic problems: low mobility demand, whether it be due to sparsely populated areas or connected with specific demands of targeted population categories. Hence this paper recalls some of the recent DRT experiences already active in Genova Metropolitan Area -the so-called DRINBUS above all- along with the on-demand mobility strategy for Ligurian internal areas in order to discuss how this new user-centered approach is acting on the marginalization of remote territories and fragile user categories. The choice to develop a MaaS scheme could re-shape metropolitan mobility as a comprehensive and global mosaic made by multiple pieces, thus making more resilient the entire system thanks to its modularity and redundancy. This allows to make more sustainable "niche" services as well, according to the systemic nature of this mobility platform, thus opposing the present unsuccessful approach of creating adhoc options, focusing indeed on the user's request to travel from point A to point B, without the need to define him as urban resident, commuter, disabled or not, towards a greater social inclusion and territorial cohesio

Holography on the lattice: the string worldsheet perspective

We review the study, on the lattice, of the Green-Schwarz gauge-fixed string action describing worldsheet fluctuations about the minimal surface holographically dual to the null cusp Wilson loop, useful to evaluate the cusp anomaly of N = 4 super Yang-Mills (sYM). We comment on discretization, numerical explorations and challenges for the non-perturbative study of this benchmark model of gauge-fixed worldsheet actions.Comment: Invited review to be published on European Physics Journal - Special Topics, 24 pages, 1 figur

Differences between computed tomoghaphy and surgical findings in acute complicated diverticulitis

Summary Background/Objective: A preoperative reliable classification system between clinical and computed tomography (CT) findings to better plan surgery in acute complicated diverticulitis (ACD) is lacking. We studied the inter-observer agreement of CT scan data and their concordance with the preoperative clinical findings and the adherence with the intraoperative status using a new classification of diverticular disease (CDD). Methods: 152 patients operated on for acute complicated diverticulitis (ACD) were retrospectively enrolled. All patients were studied with CT scan within 24 h before surgery and CT images were blinded reanalyzed by 2 couples of radiologists (A/B). Kappa value evaluated the inter-observer agreement between radiologists and the concordance between CDD, preoperative clinical findings and findings at operation. Univariate and multivariate analysis were used to evaluate the predicting values of CT classification and CDD stage at surgery on postoperative outcomes. Results: Overall inter-observer agreement for the CDD was high, with a kappa value of 0.905 (95% CI Z 0.850e0.960) for observers A and B, while the concordance between radiologica

Assessing the Feasibility of MaaS: A Contribution from Three Italian Case Studies

Making all types of public and private transport services available to users through a single and integrated digital platform is the new urban mobility paradigm called Mobility as a Service (MaaS). This scheme allows both a more sustainable urban transportation system and a more efficient transport service for users. For MaaS to be successful, its implementation should adapt to the specific features of the location covered by the service. The city maturity level has to be considered in terms of multimodality, infrastructures, regulations, user goals, and user willingness to use and pay for MaaS services. This paper discusses and analyses the results of a survey on MaaS conducted in three Italian metropolitan areas: Turin, Rome, and Genoa, which have very different and specific characteristics. The comparative analysis enables the definition of drivers, obstacles, and requisites for MaaS implementation to be successful. When it comes to cities with conservative mobility policies or cities that are new to MaaS experiences, resistance to adoption of the service might occur. The results of the research discussed in this paper can be a useful resource to enable decision makers to develop more effective and efficient transportation policie

Is the admission test for a course in medicine a good predictor of academic performance? A case-control experience at the school of medicine of Turin

ObjectivesThe usefulness of university admission tests to medical schools has been discussed in recent years. In the academic year 2014–15 in Italy, several students who failed the admission test appealed to the regional administrative court (‘Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale’—TAR) requesting to be included, despite their test results, and all were admitted to their respective courses. The existence of this population of students generated a control group, in order to evaluate the predictive capacity of the admission test. The aim of the present work is to discuss the ability of university admission tests to predict subsequent academic success.Setting and participantsThe study involved 683 students who enrolled onto the first year of the degree course in medicine in the academic year 2014–15 at the University of Turin (Molinette and San Luigi Gonzaga colleges). The students were separated into two categories: those who passed the admission test (n1=531) and those who did not pass the admission test but won their appeal in the TAR (n2=152).OutcomesThe validity of the admission test was analysed using specificity, sensitivity, positive and negative likelihood ratios (LH+, LH−), receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, area under the ROC curve (AUC), and relative (95% CI).ResultsThe results showed that the admission test appeared to be a good tool for predicting the academic performances in the first year of the course (AUC=0.70, 95% CI 0.64 to 0.76). Moreover, some subject areas seemed to have a greater discriminating capacity than others. In general, students who obtained a high score in scientific questions were more likely to obtain the required standards during the first year (LH+ 1.22, 95% CI 1.14 to 1.25).ConclusionsBased on a consistent statistical approach, our study seems to confirm the ability of the admission test to predict academic success in the first year at the school of medicine of Turin.</jats:sec

Supersphere non-linear sigma model on the lattice

Two-dimensional O(N) non-linear sigma models are exactly solvable theories and have many applications, from statistical mechanics to their use as QCD toy models. We consider a supersymmetric extension, the non-linear sigma model on the supersphere~SN+2m−1|2m≡OSP(N+2m|2m)OSP(N+2m−1|2m) . We briefly describe its renormalization properties and lattice discretization, and present a strategy for numerical simulations together with some preliminary numerical results

Encapsulation of cationic iridium(iii) tetrazole complexes into a silica matrix: Synthesis, characterization and optical properties

Herein we report the easy incorporation of brightly phosphorescent cationic iridium(iii) tetrazole complexes into a silica based matrix via an easily scalable colloidal process. For this purpose, two cationic Ir(iii) emitters bearing 5-aryl tetrazole ligands (R-CN4) were selected: blue [F2IrPTZ-Me]+(C^N = F2ppy; N^N = PTZ-Me-2-(2-methyl-2H-tetrazol-5-yl)pyridine) and red [IrQTZ-Me]+(C^N = ppy; N^N = QTZ-Me-2-(2-methyl-2H-tetrazol-5-yl)quinoline). The cationic complexes were readily adsorbed to negatively charged silica nanoparticles and trapped in the sol-gel matrix. The sol-to-solid phase transfer was performed by using an innovative spray-freeze-drying technique, leading to the formation of phosphorescent solid micro-granules. The structural and optical characterisation of the Ir(iii) complexes together with SiO2nanoparticles, nanosols (Ir@SiO2) and powders (Ir@SiO2powders), revealed how the presence of the Ir(iii)-based complexes did not alter the morphology of the colloidal silica or granulated phases. Moreover, the silica matrix did not interfere with the optical properties of the embedded complexes. The distribution of [F2IrPTZ-Me]+and [IrQTZ-Me]+in the spray-freeze-dried powders was qualitatively evaluated by fluorescence microscopy, revealing how the luminescent particles were homogeneously dispersed all over the silica matrix. Interestingly, in aqueous solution the release of complex [F2IrPTZ-Me]+from the corresponding Ir@SiO2powder is almost negligible, therefore suggesting that a strong interaction occurs between the host-silica matrix and the Ir(iii) guest complex

TiO2@BSA nano-composites investigated through orthogonal multi-techniques characterization platform.

Abstract Biocompatible coating based on bovine serum albumin (BSA) was applied on two different TiO2 nanoparticles (aeroxide P25 and food grade E171) to investigate properties and stability of resulting TiO2@BSA composites, under the final perspective to create a "Safe-by-Design" coating, able to uniform, level off and mitigate surface chemistry related phenomena, as naturally occurring when nano-phases come in touch with proteins enriched biological fluids. The first step towards validating the proposed approach is a detailed characterization of surface chemistry with the quantification of amount and stability of BSA coating deposited on nanoparticles' surfaces. At this purpose, we implemented an orthogonal multi-techniques characterization platform, providing important information on colloidal behavior, particle size distribution and BSA-coating structure of investigated TiO2 systems. Specifically, the proposed orthogonal approach enabled the quantitative determination of bound and free (not adsorbed) BSA, a key aspect for the design of intentionally BSA coated nano-structures, in nanomedicine and, overall, for the control of nano-surface reactivity. In fact, the BSA-coating strategy developed and the orthogonal characterisation performed can be extended to different designed nanomaterials in order to further investigate the protein-corona formation and promote the implementation of BSA engineered coating as a strategy to harmonize the surface reactivity and minimize the biological impact

Advanced modeling of materials with PAOFLOW 2.0:New features and software design

Recent research in materials science opens exciting perspectives to design novel quantum materials and devices, but it calls for quantitative predictions of properties which are not accessible in standard first principles packages. PAOFLOW, is a software tool that constructs tight-binding Hamiltonians from self consistent electronic wavefunctions by projecting onto a set of atomic orbitals. The electronic structure provides numerous materials properties that otherwise would have to be calculated via phenomenological models. In this paper, we describe recent re-design of the code as well as the new features and improvements in performance. In particular, we have implemented symmetry operations for unfolding equivalent k-points, which drastically reduces the runtime requirements of first principles calculations, and we have provided internal routines of projections onto atomic orbitals enabling generation of real space atomic orbitals. Moreover, we have included models for non-constant relaxation time in electronic transport calculations, doubling the real space dimensions of the Hamiltonian as well as the construction of Hamiltonians directly from analytical models. Importantly, PAOFLOW has been now converted into a Python package, and is streamlined for use directly within other Python codes. The new object oriented design treats PAOFLOW's computational routines as class methods, providing an API for explicit control of each calculation.</p