Legacy of wood charcoal production on subalpine forest structure and species composition

Land-use legacy on forest dynamics at both stand and landscape scale can last for centuries, affecting forest structure and species composition. We aimed to disentangle the history of the charcoal production legacies that historically shaped Mont Avic Natural Park (Aosta Valley, Italy) forests by integrating LiDAR, GIS, anthracological, and field data at the landscape scale. We adopted different geostatistical tools to relate geographic layers from various data sources. The overexploitation due to intensive charcoal production to fuel mining activities shaped the current forests by homogenising their structure and species composition into dense and young stands with a reduction in late seral species such as Norway spruce (Picea abies) and an increase in pioneer species such as Mountain pine (Pinus uncinata). The multidisciplinary and multi-scale framework adopted in this study stresses the role of historical landscape ecology in evaluating ecosystem resilience to past anthropogenic disturbances. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13280-022-01750-y

Optical and electrical behavior of synthetic melanin thin films spray-coated

AbstractWe investigated the optical and the electrical conductivity properties of synthetic melanin thin films spray-coated on glass. These films showed a broadband monotonic increase of the absorption coefficient, decreasing the wavelength in the Visible-NIR range. Conductivity as a function of the temperature evidenced a semiconductor like character and a hysteretic behaviour after thermal annealing up to 475 K. Thermal activation energies extrapolated by resistance curves have been explained by using the framework of a band-model as for an amorphous semiconductor

Structural and electrical properties of nanostructured silicon carbon films

Abstract The effect of the rf power on the structural and electrical properties of nanostructured silicon carbon films deposited by Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition system, using silane and methane gas mixture highly diluted in hydrogen, has been investigated. The structural and electrical properties are found to depend strongly on rf power. The increase of the rf power decreases the size of the silicon crystallites as well as the crystalline fraction and increases the carbon content in the films. The study not only indicates the correlation between crystalline fraction and the electrical conductivity but also reveals the presence of nanocrystallites in the films deposited at high rf power

Anisotropic Approach for Simulating Electron Transport in Layered Materials: Computational and Experimental Study of Highly Oriented Pyrolitic Graphite

In this work, we propose a theoretical and computational model for taking into account the anisotropic structure of Highly Oriented Pyrolitic Graphite (HOPG) in the Monte Carlo simulations of charge transport. In particular, the dielectric characteristics, such as the inelastic mean free path and energy losses, are treated by linearly combining the contributions to these observables along the two main orthogonal directions identifying the layered crystalline structure of HOPG (along the layer plane and perpendicular to it). Energy losses are evaluated from ab initio calculations of the dielectric function of the system along these two perpendicular directions. Monte Carlo simulated spectra, obtained with our anisotropic approach, are compared with acquired experimental data of Reflection Electron Energy Loss and Secondary Electron spectra, showing a good agreement. These findings validate the idea of the importance of considering properly-weighted inter-planar and intra-planar interactions in the simulation of electron transport in layered materials

Insight into Elderly ALS Patients in the Emilia Romagna Region: Epidemiological and Clinical Features of Late-Onset ALS in a Prospective, Population-Based Study

Few studies have focused on elderly (>80 years) amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients, who represent a fragile subgroup generally not included in clinical trials and often neglected because they are more difficult to diagnose and manage. We analyzed the clinical and genetic features of very late-onset ALS patients through a prospective, population-based study in the Emilia Romagna Region of Italy. From 2009 to 2019, 222 (13.76%) out of 1613 patients in incident cases were over 80 years old at diagnosis, with a female predominance (F:M = 1.18). Elderly ALS patients represented 12.02% of patients before 2015 and 15.91% from 2015 onwards (p = 0.024). This group presented with bulbar onset in 38.29% of cases and had worse clinical conditions at diagnosis compared to younger patients, with a lower average BMI (23.12 vs. 24.57 Kg/m2), a higher progression rate (1.43 vs. 0.95 points/month), and a shorter length of survival (a median of 20.77 vs. 36 months). For this subgroup, genetic analyses have seldom been carried out (25% vs. 39.11%) and are generally negative. Finally, elderly patients underwent less frequent nutritional- and respiratory-supporting procedures, and multidisciplinary teams were less involved at follow-up, except for specialist palliative care. The genotypic and phenotypic features of elderly ALS patients could help identify the different environmental and genetic risk factors that determine the age at which disease onset occurs. Since multidisciplinary management can improve a patient’s prognosis, it should be more extensively applied to this fragile group of patients

Narration in the Perspective of Education about Beauty. A Case Study.

The article describes an educational experience, which, despite the nihilistic condition of contemporary culture, has achieved significant learning outcomes in the pupils involved, because it was conducted following the narrative method in the trasmission of the contents. The didactic project aimed to promote awareness of the historical origins of the so-called Western tradition, through the comparison with the canonic poems of the classical Latin and Greek age and the medieval one. Iliad, Odyssey, Aeneid and The Divine Comedy were selected to be narrated in class not only because their narration had represented a guide and a model for the self-consciousness of the peoples of reference, but also because their formative function took place successfully due to the marked aestetic value and consequent appeal of their narration

Uncertainty of heart rate variability measured through a wearable device during office activities

This paper shows the results of an experimental campaign conducted to quantify the measurement uncertainty of heart rate variability (HRV), measured through a commercial smartwatch, while participants were performing office activities. The selected activities (sitting, moving the mouse, writing a text on the laptop, handwriting, walking, walking upstairs/downstairs) are subjected to motion artifacts (MA) that can negatively impact the HRV signal. Measurement uncertainty for each activity has been computed comparing the HRV acquired by the smartwatch with a reference sensor, i.e. multi-parametric chest belt BioHarness 3.0. Activities like resting and moving the mouse exhibit an uncertainty of +/- 60 ms and +/- 90 ms, while activities such as handwriting, walking and walking upstairs/downstairs increase the measurement uncertainty from +/- 215 ms up to +/- 530 ms. These results are the preliminary step of a major study developed to measure the well-being of occupants using also HRV signals. In this context, accelerometer data, collected by the smartwatch, could possibly classify the activity performed by the workers through artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms; then, the HRV measurement uncertainty associated with the recognized activity could be used as a support for the discrimination of specific corrupted HRV segments, for minimizing the uncertainty in the HRV signal caused by MA

Machine learning algorithms for the activity monitoring of elders by home sensor network

The aim of this research is to measure and cluster the activity of ageing people, through a minimally invasive home sensor network, realised by movement and light sensors, installed in seven apartments. Unsupervised machine learning (UML) algorithms are used to cluster daily data in different pattern of activation of light and movement sensors. Data are grouped in 6 time slots per day of 4 hours each and the activations of each sensor are counted. The chosen number of clusters is set to 2 and best clustering results are obtained for the first time slot of House 4 and House 5 with a Silhouette score of 0.7 and 0.9, suggesting clear separation between the days belonging to 2 different clusters. In addition, to provide an explanation to the clustering algorithm, a supervised machine learning (SML) algorithm is used to establish which sensor, in the different time slots of the day, is ruling the clustering. Moreover, a Decision Tree algorithm (DT) is used to understand the clustering methodology adopted by the UML algorithm for each time window of the different houses. DT allows identifying which sensor may cause the assignment of a diversity condition between the days of the dataset