18 research outputs found
Experimental investigation and monitoring of a polypropylene-based fiber reinforced concrete road pavement
Abstract In this work, basic guidelines are provided for the design of a polypropylene-based fiber reinforced concrete (PFRC) road pavement, as applied in an actual testing section resting inside a tunnel of the "Quadrilatero Marche-Umbria" road empowerment project, Italy. Results of a six-month monitoring carried out on actual traffic loads are also presented, as a feedback to the designing stage. Monitoring encompasses direct measurement of the strain level inside the cast as well as acoustic measurement. It is shown that the fiber reinforced concrete technology provides an efficient, safe as well as cost-effective design solution for roadways, especially inside tunnels
The XMM-Newton Slew view of IGRJ17361-4441: a transient in the globular cluster NGC 6388
IGRJ17361-4441 is a hard transient recently observed by the INTEGRAL
satellite. The source, close to the center of gravity of the globular cluster
NGC 6388, quickly became the target of follow-up observations conducted by the
Chandra, Swift/XRT and RXTE observatories. Here, we concentrate in particular
on a set of observations conducted by the XMM-Newton satellite during two
slews, in order to get the spectral information of the source and search for
spectral variations. The spectral parameters determined by the recent
XMM-Newton slew observations were compared to the previously known results. The
maximum unabsorbed -ray flux in the 0.5-10 keV band as detected by the
XMM-Newton slew observations is erg cm
s, i.e. consistent with that observed by the Swift/XRT satellite 15 days
earlier. The spectrum seems to be marginally consistent () with that derived from the previous high energy observation.Comment: Accepted for publication on New Astronomy, 2012. A sentence about the
globular cluster 47 Tuc was partially rewritten to avoid confusio
Chronic hepatitis C: hepatic iron content does not correlate with response to antiviral therapy
The Italian arm of the PREPARE study: an international project to evaluate and license a maternal vaccine against group B streptococcus.
BACKGROUND: Group B streptococcus (GBS) is a leading cause of sepsis, pneumonia and meningitis in infants, with long term neurodevelopmental sequelae. GBS may be associated with poor pregnancy outcomes, including spontaneous abortion, stillbirth and preterm birth. Intrapartum antibiotic prophylaxis (IAP) is currently the only way to prevent early-onset disease (presenting at 0 to 6âdays of life), although it has no impact on the disease presenting over 6âdays of life and its implementation is challenging in resource poor countries. A maternal vaccine against GBS could reduce all GBS manifestations as well as improve pregnancy outcomes, even in low-income countries. MAIN BODY: The term "PREPARE" designates an international project aimed at developing a maternal vaccination platform to test vaccines against neonatal GBS infections by maternal immunization. It is a non-profit, multi-center, interventional and experimental study (promoted by the St George University of London. [UK]) with the aim of developing a maternal vaccination platform, determining pregnancy outcomes, and defining the extent of GBS infections in children and mothers in Africa. PREPARE also aims to estimate the protective serocorrelates against the main GBS serotypes that cause diseases in Europe and Africa and to conduct two trials on candidate GBS vaccines. PREPARE consists of 6 work packages. In four European countries (Italy, UK, Netherlands, France) the recruitment of cases and controls will start in 2020 and will end in 2022. The Italian PREPARE network includes 41 centers. The Italian network aims to collect: GBS isolates from infants with invasive disease, maternal and neonatal sera (cases); cord sera and GBS strains from colonized mothers whose infants do not develop GBS infection (controls). SHORT CONCLUSION: PREPARE will contribute information on protective serocorrelates against the main GBS serotypes that cause diseases in Europe and Africa. The vaccine that will be tested by the PREPARE study could be an effective strategy to prevent GBS disease
A MODEST review
We present an account of the state of the art in the fields explored by the
research community invested in 'Modeling and Observing DEnse STellar systems'.
For this purpose, we take as a basis the activities of the MODEST-17
conference, which was held at Charles University, Prague, in September 2017.
Reviewed topics include recent advances in fundamental stellar dynamics,
numerical methods for the solution of the gravitational N-body problem,
formation and evolution of young and old star clusters and galactic nuclei,
their elusive stellar populations, planetary systems, and exotic compact
objects, with timely attention to black holes of different classes of mass and
their role as sources of gravitational waves.
Such a breadth of topics reflects the growing role played by collisional
stellar dynamics in numerous areas of modern astrophysics. Indeed, in the next
decade, many revolutionary instruments will enable the derivation of positions
and velocities of individual stars in the Milky Way and its satellites and will
detect signals from a range of astrophysical sources in different portions of
the electromagnetic and gravitational spectrum, with an unprecedented
sensitivity. On the one hand, this wealth of data will allow us to address a
number of long-standing open questions in star cluster studies; on the other
hand, many unexpected properties of these systems will come to light,
stimulating further progress of our understanding of their formation and
evolution.Comment: 42 pages; accepted for publication in 'Computational Astrophysics and
Cosmology'. We are much grateful to the organisers of the MODEST-17
conference (Charles University, Prague, September 2017). We acknowledge the
input provided by all MODEST-17 participants, and, more generally, by the
members of the MODEST communit
Safety assessment of historic timber structural elements
Dealing with the safety assessment of existing buildings engineers often have to face the diagnosis of old timber structures. The current standards framework does not provide clear prescriptions about the evaluation of these kinds of structures, so the principal aim of this work is to outline an alternative methodology that leaves the concept of âKnowledge Levelâ and âConfidence Factorâ, usually applied for existing buildings. An experimental campaign carried out on old timber joists supplied a sample of homogeneous data that were the support to the theoretical reasoning. Keywords: Old timber, Mechanical behaviour, Safety assessment, Existing buildings, Confidence Facto