Development of a multifunctional panel for aerospace use through SLM additive manufacturing

Lattice materials can overcome the need of light and stiff structures in the aerospace industry. The wing leading edge is one of the most critical parts for both on-board subsystem and structure features: it must withstand to the aerodynamic loads and bird-strike, integrating also the anti-ice system functions. Nowadays, this part is made by different components bonded together such as external skin, internal passageways, and feeding tubes. In the present work, a single-piece multifunctional panel made by additive manufacturing will be developed. Optimal design and manufacturing are discussed according to technological constraints, aeronautical performances and sustainability

Dissemination activity and impact of maternal and newborn health projects in Ethiopia, India and Nigeria

This study aimed to document the key messages, dissemination activities and impacts of selected projects within the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health strategy portfolio, and consider how these might contribute toward the learning agenda for the strategy

Cotard’s Syndrome: Clinical Case Presentation and Literature Review

In 1880 French neurologist Jules Cotard described a condition characterized by delusion of negation (nihilistic delusion) in a melancholia context. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in Cotard’s syndrome. The most prominent symptoms of Cotard’s Syndrome are depressive mood, nihilistic delusions concerning one’s own body and one’s own existence, delusions of guilt, immortality and hypochondria. The aim of the present paper is to review literature evidences concerning Cotard’s syndrome and to describe a clinical case keeping in the background the recent trends on its psychopathological implications. In the clinical study, the following sequence of stages emerged: the dissociative side, expressed as a loss of body-mind cohesion; the ‘mixed’ mood disorder, with depressive-manic episodes, and a persecutory background, all coexisting in the anguish of the idea of a body falling apart, the anguish of a descent towards the abyss of melancholia and/or an ascent to unlimited euphoria, characteristic of an “uncommon alarm” for loss of Self cohesion

Modularity-based approach for tracking communities in dynamic social networks

Community detection is a crucial task to unravel the intricate dynamics of online social networks. The emergence of these networks has dramatically increased the volume and speed of interactions among users, presenting researchers with unprecedented opportunities to explore and analyze the underlying structure of social communities. Despite a growing interest in tracking the evolution of groups of users in real-world social networks, the predominant focus of community detection efforts has been on communities within static networks. In this paper, we introduce a novel framework for tracking communities over time in a dynamic network, where a series of significant events is identified for each community. Our framework adopts a modularity-based strategy and does not require a predefined threshold, leading to a more accurate and robust tracking of dynamic communities. We validated the efficacy of our framework through extensive experiments on synthetic networks featuring embedded events. The results indicate that our framework can outperform the state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, we utilized the proposed approach on a Twitter network comprising over 60,000 users and 5 million tweets throughout 2020, showcasing its potential in identifying dynamic communities in real-world scenarios. The proposed framework can be applied to different social networks and provides a valuable tool to gain deeper insights into the evolution of communities in dynamic social networks

sp hybridization in free carbon nanoparticles-presence and stability observed by near edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy

The presence and stability of sp hybridized atoms in free carbon nanoparticles was investigated by NEXAFS spectroscopy. The experiments show that a predominant fraction of carbon atoms is found in linear sp-chains and that conversion into sp(2) structures proceeds already at low temperature and in the gas phase

From Tweet to Theft: Tracing the Flow of Stolen Cryptocurrency

This paper presents a case study of a cryptocurrency scam that utilized coordinated and inauthentic behavior on Twitter. In 2020, 143 accounts sold by an underground merchant were used to orchestrate a fake giveaway. Tweets pointing to a fake blog post lured victims into sending Uniswap tokens (UNI) to designated addresses on the Ethereum blockchain, with the false promise of receiving more tokens in return. Using one of the scammer's addresses and leveraging the transparency and immutability of the Ethereum blockchain, we traced the flow of stolen funds through various addresses, revealing the tactics adopted to obfuscate traceability. The final destination of the funds involved two deposit addresses. The first, managed by a well-known cryptocurrency exchange, was likely associated with the scammer's own account on that platform and saw deposits exceeding $3.5 million. The second address was linked to a popular cryptocurrency swap service. These findings highlight the critical need for more stringent measures to verify the source of funds and prevent illicit activities

UBI MINOR, MAIOR CESSAT: the role of the perception of nature and the compassion for pro-environmental intentions

openLa tesi mira a indagare come i costrutti di percezione della natura e compassione influenzano le intenzioni pro-ambientali dei/delle partecipanti all'esperimento. Essa si sviluppa attraverso un primo focus sul tema del cambiamento climatico, mostrandone sia le implicazioni sul panorama globale, sia gli studi psicologici presenti in letteratura che nel corso degli anni ne hanno indagato le implicazioni sociali. Per realizzare lo studio sono state costruite tre diverse condizioni (due sperimentali e una di controllo) a cui sono stati/e esposti/e i/le partecipanti, così da comprendere quale avrebbe avuto più influenza sulle loro intenzioni pro-ambientali. Le condizioni sperimentali consistevano da un lato nell’umanizzazione degli esseri vegetali e quindi nello stimolare l’idea che esseri vegetali avessero delle caratteristiche umane, mentre dall’altro nell’attivare una categorizzazione universale, ossia l’idea che tutti gli esseri viventi (esseri umani, piante e animali) costituissero un’unica identità universalmente coesa. La terza condizione serviva come controllo. Lo scopo della ricerca era dunque quello di comprendere se l’umanizzazione degli esseri vegetali (come fiori, alberi, ma anche veri e propri paesaggi naturali) e la creazione di un’unica identità universale potessero modificare in senso positivo (quindi aumentare) i comportamenti pro-ambientali che i/le partecipanti erano intenzionati/e a compiere a sostegno della natura. All’interno di questo modello, abbiamo ipotizzato ulteriormente che trovasse spazio anche il costrutto della compassione, fungendo da mediatore nella relazione tra le variabili indipendenti e dipendenti. Dai risultati è emersa una differenza di genere nelle intenzioni pro-ambientali dei/delle partecipanti, mediata in alcuni casi dalla compassione verso gli esseri umani o verso la natura. Tale differenza di genere è stata indagata all'interno dell'ultimo capitolo dell'elaborato, in cui viene inoltre proposto un approccio "eco-femminista" (che vede come perno centrale l'inclusività) come soluzione sociale per affrontare il radicato fenomeno del cambiamento climatico

The role of melatonin in mood disorders

Melatonin (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine) has been discovered as a hormone secreted by the pineal gland, even though it is also synthetized in various other organs, tissues, and cells. The circadian rhythm of melatonin is often used as an indicator phase position since it is a well-defined, high-amplitude rhythm controlled by the hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nuclei. Melatonin production is controlled by this endogenous circadian timing system. It peaks during the night and is suppressed by daylight. Mood spectrum disorders, including bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and seasonal affective disorder (SAD), have been observed to be accompanied by circadian dysregulation as well as dysregulation in melatonin secretion. Simultaneously, it has also been documented that disruptions in circadian rhythms, including the sleep/wake cycle, though environmental means can produce mood-related problems in vulnerable individuals. These findings suggested that altered circadian rhythms might be biological markers of these disorders. As melatonin is considered a chronobiotic factor, ie, able to entrain the circadian rhythms of several biological functions (eg, activity/rest, sleep/wake, body temperature, endocrine rhythms, etc), its use may provide a new therapeutic approach for the treatment of affective disorders. However, the available evidence is controversial. This review summarizes the data published so far about reliable evidence on the role of melatonin in affective disorder

Efficient Parallel Statistical Model Checking of Biochemical Networks

We consider the problem of verifying stochastic models of biochemical networks against behavioral properties expressed in temporal logic terms. Exact probabilistic verification approaches such as, for example, CSL/PCTL model checking, are undermined by a huge computational demand which rule them out for most real case studies. Less demanding approaches, such as statistical model checking, estimate the likelihood that a property is satisfied by sampling executions out of the stochastic model. We propose a methodology for efficiently estimating the likelihood that a LTL property P holds of a stochastic model of a biochemical network. As with other statistical verification techniques, the methodology we propose uses a stochastic simulation algorithm for generating execution samples, however there are three key aspects that improve the efficiency: first, the sample generation is driven by on-the-fly verification of P which results in optimal overall simulation time. Second, the confidence interval estimation for the probability of P to hold is based on an efficient variant of the Wilson method which ensures a faster convergence. Third, the whole methodology is designed according to a parallel fashion and a prototype software tool has been implemented that performs the sampling/verification process in parallel over an HPC architecture