Power And Energy Demand to Support E-Mobility on Highway: The Italian Case Study

In recent years, market trends are confirming the increasing use of electric vehicles for private mobility. The use of such vehicles is inevitably affecting highway contexts as well. Therefore, highway network operators need to plan for the installation of adequate infrastructure to enable and manage the growing demand for fast charging expected in the coming years. This paper aims to assess the impact that this charging demand may have on the service areas (SAs) of the highway network operated by Autostrade per l'Italia. Starting from available traffic data, this paper proposes a methodology to forecast, for each service area, the future charging needs of EVs on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis. The analysis considers both the energy and the power that needs to be made available to ensure charging during daily traffic peaks. The results show that the impact generated by EVs will be generally significant, especially in terms of power demands with peaks between two and three megawatts. The methodology developed is entirely general and therefore applicable for similar planning in other highway or suburban roadway contexts. The validity of the developed methodology and the made assumptions have been preliminary confirmed through an initial set of data collected from one of the charging stations installed in one representative service area

Intestinal perforation after surgical treatment for incisional hernia. iatrogenic or idiopathic?

Intestinal perforation (IP) is a life-threatening gastroenterological condition requiring urgent surgical care, which may present itself as an uncommon complication following incisional hernia repair surgery, most often because of iatrogenic traumatism occurring during the procedure. However, we report a case where a spontaneous onset can be hypothesised. A 60-years-old patient underwent repair of an abdominal laparocele, through rectus abdominis muscle plasty, 5 years after development of an incisional hernia due to exploratory laparotomy for the treatment of acute appendicitis. Xipho-pubic scar was excised and umbilicus and supra-umbilical hernia sac dissected, a linear median incision was performed along the sub-umbilical linea alba, reaching preperitoneal plane to assess any intestinal loop adherence to the abdominal wall. After limited viscerolysis, abdominal wall defect was corrected by 'rectus abdominis muscle plasty' and umbilicus reconstruction by Santanelli technique. Postoperative course was uneventful until Day 29, with sudden onset of epigastric pain, fever and bulge. Sixty cubic centimeter pus was drained percutaneously and cavity was rinsed with a 50% H2O2 and H2O V-V solution until draining clear fluid. Symptoms recurred two days later, while during rinsing presented dyspnoea. X-Ray and CT scan diagnosed IP, and she underwent under emergency an exploratory laparotomy, leading to right hemicolectomy extended to last ileal loops and middle third of the transverse, right monolateral salpingo-ovariectomy and a temporary ileostomy by general surgeon. Twenty-three days later an ileostomy reversal surgery was performed and 8 days after she was discharged. At latest follow-up patient showed fair conditions, complaining abdominal pain and diarrhoea, attributable to the extensive intestinal resection. IP following incisional hernia repair, is reported as uncommon and early postoperative complication. In our case, the previous regular postoperative course with late onset lead us to hypothesise a possible idiopathic etiopathogenesis, because of a strangulation followed by gangrene and abscess formation, which might begin before the incisional hernia repair and unnoticed at the time surgery was performed

On local boundary CFT and non-local CFT on the boundary

The holographic relation between local boundary conformal quantum field theories (BCFT) and their non-local boundary restrictions is reviewed, and non-vacuum BCFT's, whose existence was conjectured previously, are constructed.Comment: 16 pages. Contribution to "Rigorous Quantum Field Theory", Symposium in honour of J. Bros, Paris, July 2004. Based on joint work math-ph/0405067 with R. Long

The Metal-Insulator Transition of NbO2: an Embedded Peierls Instability

Results of first principles augmented spherical wave electronic structure calculations for niobium dioxide are presented. Both metallic rutile and insulating low-temperature NbO2, which crystallizes in a distorted rutile structure, are correctly described within density functional theory and the local density approximation. Metallic conductivity is carried to equal amounts by metal t_{2g} orbitals, which fall into the one-dimensional d_parallel band and the isotropically dispersing e_{g}^{pi} bands. Hybridization of both types of bands is almost negligible outside narrow rods along the line X--R. In the low-temperature phase splitting of the d_parallel band due to metal-metal dimerization as well as upshift of the e_{g}^{pi} bands due to increased p-d overlap remove the Fermi surface and open an optical band gap of about 0.1 eV. The metal-insulator transition arises as a Peierls instability of the d_parallel band in an embedding background of e_{g}^{pi} electrons. This basic mechanism should also apply to VO2, where, however, electronic correlations are expected to play a greater role due to stronger localization of the 3d electrons.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, 6 eps figures, additional material avalable at http://www.physik.uni-augsburg.de/~eyert