A distributed heterogeneous image server

Digital image transmission is now ubiquitous across computer networks and thus there is increasing pressure to allow access to medical image data at sites remote from PACS locations. In fact, it may soon make economic sense to outsource medical image services - to dedicated service providers at geographical locations outside of the traditional radiology department or HIS’s. The technical challenge faced by system developers is to produce client-Viewer/server-PACS configurations that can realistically span the network. In particular, the systems must provide the performance usually expected by client medics and it must be flexible to the needs of the service providers. At CRS4 - BioMedical Applications - we are integrating various technologies derived from the www-intranet field, and object-oriented middleware to prototype technological solutions that address both the issues of performance and flexibility. These are discussed in turn below; then we provide an overview of our system

The SITAI project for the industrial areas of Sardinia: from a GIS database to a web-based site selection tool

SITAI, Sistema Informativo Territoriale delle Aree Industriali della Sardegna (Geographic Information System for the Industrial Areas of Sardinia) is a product which is being developed in Sardinia by Osservatorio Industriale della Sardegna with the support of CRS4. The system has been conceived with three main aims. The first is to conduct economic studies related to site and resource optimization, through analysis of the firms, facilities and infrastructure available in the Sardinian region and within each industrial area. The second is to promote Sardinia's industrial parks and to offer a site selection tool to potential investors, providing an integrated and harmonized view of the various industrial sites by means of a web-based interface to the data. Finally, the system is being proposed as a common starting point for the implementation of facility management applications within the industrial parks. The core of the SITAI database is represented by a set of geographic layers for each of the 23 currently active parks, linked to detailed information on the available infrastructure, the existing utilities, the characteristics of the firms located in the area, and on the costs for siting a new activity. This information is complemented by a regional-level view of the transportation networks and administrative boundaries, allowing to perform complex analyses on the available information. The project is now in its fourth year of life. After a prototype phase conducted in 1996-1997 on a single industrial park, the complete "desktop" version of the system has been implemented in 1998, and is currently being used by Osservatorio Industriale to provide, jointly with its other databases concerning the regional economy, a support to local policy makers, private companies, and consultants. During the past year, in addition to the development of the web-based interface to the database (released in May 2000) and the update of the database, one of the key issues faced has concerned the technology transfer towards the various actors involved in the project, either as data providers (i.e. the managers and the technicians of the parks), or as users (i.e. Osservatorio Industriale in their role as socio-economic analysts), in terms both of awareness raising on the potential of GIS-enabled applications and of training on the use of the system. The presentation will describe the features of the system, discuss some of the issues which have emerged as critical during the project, and present its possible further developments. In particular, we will focus on the site selection functionality offered by the web-based interface

Una soluzione WEB-GIS per la pubblicazione di dati statistici della Regione Sardegna

Dal 25 al 27 febbraio 2009 si è svolto a Cagliari il X Meeting degli utenti italiani GRASS e GFOSS. L'evento rappresenta da dieci anni l'occasione principale in cui tutta la comunità italiana, attiva nel campo dell'informazione geografica libera, si riunisce per confrontarsi e discutere sugli sviluppi futuri nel settore. Il meeting è stato organizzato dal CRS4 (Centro di Ricerca, Sviluppo e Studi Superiori in Sardegna), con il patrocinio dell'Università degli Studi di Cagliari, di Sardegna Ricerche e dell'associazione GFOSS.it. Gli obiettivi del X Meeting comprendono la presentazione delle innovazioni GFOSS nei seguenti campi: Sviluppi e personalizzazioni di software GIS liberi; Dati geografici liberi; GFOSS per la pubblica amministrazione; Formazione, divulgazione e sensibilizzazione nel campo del software libero; Interoperabilità e standard; Informazione geografica diffusa: web 2.0, GPS, LBS, etc ; Ambiente e territorio; Telerilevamento; Applicazioni di GeostatisticaPer favorire la divulgazione dell’informazione statistica la Regione Autonoma della Sardegna (RAS) ha affidato all'Osservatorio Economico il compito di gestire e popolare il sito istituzionale www.sardegnastatistiche.it. A tale scopo è stato implementato un sistema di consultazione dinamica denominato “Consulta le statistiche” che, utilizzando soluzioni open source quali Symfony Framework e Geoserver, mette a disposizione dati e indicatori aggregati per argomento e temi, per area geografica e per annualità, in formato tabellare, grafico e cartografico. Questo lavoro descrive la soluzione adottata per favorire la cooperazione tra i soggetti che concorrono alla realizzazione della componente WEB-GIS di “Consulta le statistiche”. Tale realizzazione ha reso necessario da un lato il rispetto delle specifiche imposte dal Content Management System (CMS) del portale della RAS e dall’altro l’utilizzo della cartografia e dei navigatori geografici del Sistema Informativo Territoriale Regionale (SITR). Si è pertanto deciso di adottare una soluzione secondo il modello Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) che, attraverso una opportuna progettazione del Model View Controller (MVC), consente l’interazione di sistemi prodotti in domini di proprietà differenti e che al contempo si integri con il CMS della RAS. In questo modo l’applicativo WEB-GIS eroga indicatori statistici su base geografica mentre le basi informative restano nei rispettivi sistemi di produzione in modalità controllata. Per garantire l’effettiva indipendenza dei sistemi proprietari, l’Osservatorio Economico pubblica un servizio interrogabile in modalità dinamica che restituisce informazione in formato XML. E’ stato quindi disaccoppiato il presentation layer dalla logica delle classi business che utilizzano le metodologie statistiche. I contenuti statistici sono stati modellati all’interno di uno schema XML standard che viene letto e trasformato in pagine web dal CMS RAS dove risiedono i servizi in stile webservice per la generazione della cartografia di base. In particolare l’esigenza di “Consulta le statistiche” per la parte cartografica può essere riassunta nella produzione di mappe coropletiche, nell’utilizzo della cartografia del DB SITR e nella gestione dei dati statistici là dove sono prodotti ed elaborati.2009-02-27Facoltà di Ingegneria, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Viale Merello, CagliariX Meeting degli utenti italiani GRASS e GFOS

The RPC system for the CMS experiment at the LHC

The CMS detector at the LHC has a redundant muon system. Two independent muon systems are used in the L1 trigger. One of them is based on wire chambers, the other on RPC detectors. Properly combining the answers of the two systems results in a highly efficient L1 trigger with high flexibility from the point of view of rate control. Simulation results show, however, that the RPC system suffers from false triggers caused by coincidence of spurious hits. System improvements, which could avoid oiling the chambers, are possible. RPCs have also proved to be very useful for muon track reconstruction

Experimental results on RPC neutron sensitivity

Abstract RPC neutron sensitivity has been studied during two tests done with different neutrons energies. In the first test, neutrons from spontaneous fission events of 252 Cf were used (average energy 2 MeV ); while in the second test neutrons were produced using a 50 MeV deuteron beam on a 1 cm thick beryllium target (average energy 20 MeV ). Preliminary results show that the neutron sensitivity in double gap mode is (0.52±0.03)×10−3 at about 2 MeV and (5.3±0.5)×10−3 at about 20 MeV

Efecto de Azospirillum brasilense sobre la cosecha y el desarrollo radical de plantas de caña de azúcar variedad C86-456 obtenidas por cultivo in vitro, en condiciones normales y bajo sobrehumedecimiento del suelo

In order to know the influence of the bacteria Azospirillum brasilense on plants of sugar cane, cultivar C86-456, from tissue culture under normal conditions and flooded soil in a Vertisol from El Valle del Cauto, an experiment was carried out using an at random blocks design. The main crop variables (pol in cane, t. caña.ha-1 and t. pol.ha-1) at the twelve months of age were taken, as stump of spring of the year and the development reached by the radical system in its more active area to achieve this experiment. The best results in the crop variables and development of the radical system were obtained it the treatments where the bacteria was present, although non significant under both conditions, evidencing that the stress due to excess of water in the soil affects the normal development of the sugar cane in general by modifying the kindness that the rhizospheric microorganism provides.Key words: biofertilizer, radical system, Saccharum, yieldPara conocer la influencia que ejerce la bacteria Azospirillum brasilense sobre plantas caña de azúcar, variedad C86-456 obtenidas por cultivo in vitro en un Vertisol del Valle del Cauto, en condiciones normales y bajo sobrehumedecimiento, se realizó un experimento con un diseño de bloques al azar. Para esto se tomaron las principales variables de cosecha (pol en caña, t. caña.ha-1 y t. pol.ha-1) y el desarrollo alcanzado por el sistema radical en su área más activa en ciclo de caña planta a los doce meses de cultivo. Los mejores resultados de las variables de cosecha y desarrollo del sistema radical, se obtuvieron en los tratamientos donde la bacteria estuvo presente, aunque no significativos en ambas condiciones, evidenciando que el estrés por exceso de agua en el suelo provoca disminuciones del normal desarrollo de la caña de azúcar en general y modifica las bondades que aporta el microorganismo rizosférico.Palabras clave: biofertilizante, rendimiento, Saccharum, sistema radica

RPC sensitivity to low energy neutrons and ? rays:preliminary results

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Design of analog front-ends for the RD53 demonstrator chip

The RD53 collaboration is developing a large scale pixel front-end chip, which will be a tool to evaluate the performance of 65 nm CMOS technology in view of its application to the readout of the innermost detector layers of ATLAS and CMS at the HL-LHC. Experimental results of the characterization of small prototypes will be discussed in the frame of the design work that is currently leading to the development of the large scale demonstrator chip RD53A to be submitted in early 2017. The paper is focused on the analog processors developed in the framework of the RD53 collaboration, including three time over threshold front-ends, designed by INFN Torino and Pavia, University of Bergamo and LBNL and a zero dead time front-end based on flash ADC designed by a joint collaboration between the Fermilab and INFN. The paper will also discuss the radiation tolerance features of the front-end channels, which were exposed to up to 800 Mrad of total ionizing dose to reproduce the system operation in the actual experiment

METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ACTIVATING AND CONTROLLING A WATER-REPELLING PROCESS IN WALLS

The present invention relates to a method and a system for activating and controlling a water-repelling process in wall structures. It is therefore of interest in the building industry, particularly in the field of building reclamation

Quinoxaline chemistry: Part 16: 4-Substituted anilino and 4-substituted phenoxymethyl pyrrolo[1,2-a]quinoxalines and <i>N</i>-[4-(pyrrolo[1,2-a]quinoxalin-4-yl)amino and hydroxymethyl]benzoyl glutamates: synthesis and evaluation of in vitro biological activity

Twenty eight pyrrolo[1,2-a]quinoxalines bearing at position 4 various substituents related to the moieties present in classical and non classical antifolic agents were prepared and evaluated in vitro for antiproliferative activity. In an in vitro screening performed at NCI, several compounds emerged as potent antiproliferative agents at concentrations ranging between 10 and 100 μM. Interestingly, some of these compounds proved active also against bovine and murine DHFR (Farmaco 53 (1998) 480). More recently, a compound of classical antifolate type has been reported to be a potent inhibitor of hDHFR in vitro (Farmaco 58 (2003) 51). We then synthesized new derivatives that, in our hands, were endowed with in vitro antiproliferative activities as low as 3.4 μM against a panel of cell lines derived from hematological and solid tumours. In addition, a complete screening of cytotoxicity, antiretroviral HIV-1 and antimicrobial activity has been carried out