How Mobile Devices are Transforming Disaster Relief and Public Safety

With its growing usage, mobile technology is greatly improving disaster relief and public safety efforts. Countries around the world face threats from natural disasters, climate change, civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and criminal activities, among others. Mobile devices, tablets, and smart phones enable emergency providers and the general public to manage these challenges and mitigate public safety concerns.In this paper, part of the Brookings Mobile Economy Project, we focus on how mobile technology provides an early warning system, aids in emergency coordination, and improves public communications. In particular, we review how mobile devices assist with public safety, disaster planning, and crisis response. We explain how these devices are instrumental in the design and functioning of integrated, multi-layered communications networks. We demonstrate how they have helped save lives and ameliorate human suffering throughout the world

Application of sprayed carbon nanotubes to light detector

Nanomaterials, likes carbon nanotubes (CNTs), are interesting for the development of new generation photodetectors. A study of CNT films deposited at low temperature by spray technique, starting from a nanodispersion of nanotube powder in a non-polar 1,2-dichloro-ethane solvent, is presented. Transmission and Scanning Electron Microscopy images are reported to show the morphological properties of the deposited CNTs. Light detectors have been prepared on silicon substrates. The nanotubes layer has been covered with an indium tin oxide layer to obtain ohmic contact. Electrical device characteristics, both in dark and on light irradiation, are reported

Radiation reaction and quantum damped harmonic oscillator

By taking a Klein-Gordon field as the environment of an harmonic oscillator and using a new method for dealing with quantum dissipative systems (minimal coupling method), the quantum dynamics and radiation reaction for a quantum damped harmonic oscillator investigated. Applying perturbation method, some transition probabilities indicating the way energy flows between oscillator, reservoir and quantum vacuum, obtainedComment: 12 pages. Accepted for publication in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Biofilms and cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) signaling: lessons from Pseudomonas aeruginosa and other bacteria

The cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) second messenger represents a signaling system that regulates many bacterial behaviors and is of key importance for driving the lifestyle switch between motile loner cells and biofilm formers. This review provides an up-to-date compendium of c-di-GMP pathways connected to biofilm formation, biofilm-associated motilities, and other functionalities in the ubiquitous and opportunistic human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. This bacterium is frequently adopted as a model organism to study bacterial biofilm formation. Importantly, its versatility and adaptation capabilities are linked with a broad range of complex regulatory networks, including a large set of genes involved in c-di-GMP biosynthesis, degradation, and transmission

Effect of metal clusters on the swelling of gold-fluorocarbon-polymer composite films

We have investigated the phenomenon of swelling due to acetone diffusion in fluorocarbon polymer films doped with different gold concentrations below the percolation threshold. The presence of the gold clusters in the polymer is shown to improve the mixing between the fluorocarbon polymer and the acetone, which is not a good solvent for this kind of polymers. In order to explain the experimental results the stoichiometry and the morphology of the polymer--metal system have been studied and a modified version of the Flory--Huggins model has been developed

The antiquity of hydrocephalus: the first full palaeo-neuropathological description

The Pathology Museum of the University of Florence houses a rich collection of anatomical specimens and over a hundred waxworks portraying pathological conditions occurring in the nineteenth century, when the museum was established. Clinical and autopsy findings of these cases can still be retrieved from the original museum catalogue, offering a rare opportunity for retrospective palaeo-pathological diagnostics. We present a historical case of severe hydrocephalus backed by modern-day anthropological, radiological and molecular analyses conducted on the skeleton of an 18-month-old male infant deceased in 1831. Luigi Calamai (1796-1851), a wax craftsman of La Specola workshop in Florence, was commissioned to create a life-sized wax model of the child's head, neck and upper thorax. This artwork allows us to appreciate the cranial and facial alterations determined by 30 lb of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) accumulated within the cerebral ventricular system. Based on the autopsy report, gross malformations of the neural tube, tumours and haemorrhage could be excluded. A molecular approach proved helpful in confirming sex. We present this case as the so-far most compelling case of hydrocephalus in palaeo-pathological research

A first experimental test of de Broglie-Bohm theory against standard quantum mechanics

De Broglie - Bohm (dBB) theory is a deterministic theory, built for reproducing almost all Quantum Mechanics (QM) predictions, where position plays the role of a hidden variable. It was recently shown that different coincidence patterns are predicted by QM and dBB when a double slit experiment is realised under specific conditions and, therefore, an experiment can test the two theories. In this letter we present the first realisation of such a double slit experiment by using correlated photons produced in type I Parametric Down Conversion. Our results confirm QM contradicting dBB predictions