A Supervisor Αgent-Based on the Markovian Decision Process Framework to Optimize the Behavior of a Highly Automated System

In this paper, we explore how MDP can be used as the framework to design and develop an Intelligent Decision Support System/Recommender System, in order to extend human perception and overcome human senses limitations (because covered by the ADS), by augmenting human cognition, emphasizing human judgement and intuition, as well as supporting him/her to take the proper decision in the right terms and time. Moreover, we develop Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) strategies able to make “transparent” the decision-making/recommendation process. This is strongly needed, since the adoption of partial automated systems is not only connected to the effectiveness of the decision and control processes, but also relies on how these processes are communicated and “explained” to the human driver, in order to achieve his/her trust

A deep XMM-Newton serendipitous survey of a middle-latitude area

The radio quiet neutron star 1E1207.4-5209 has been the target of a 260 ks XMM-Newton observation, which yielded, as a by product, an harvest of about 200 serendipitous X-ray sources above a limiting flux of 2E-15 erg/cm2/s, in the 0.3-8 keV energy range. In view of the intermediate latitude of our field (b~10 deg), it comes as no surprise that the logN-logS distribution of our serendipitous sources is different from those measured either in the Galactic Plane or at high galactic latitudes. Here we shall concentrate on the analysis of the brightest sources in our sample, which unveiled a previously unknown Seyfert-2 galaxy.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication by Astronomy & Astrophysic

Managing soil nitrate with cover crops and buffer strips in Sicilian vineyards

When soil nitrate levels are low, plants suffer nitrogen (N) deficiency but when the levels are excessive, soil nitrates can pollute surface and subsurface waters. Strategies to reduce the nitrate pollution are necessary to reach a sustainable use of resources such as soil, water and plant. Buffer strips and cover crops can contribute to the management of soil nitrates, but little is known of their effectiveness in semiarid vineyards plantations. The research was carried out in the south coast of Sicily (Italy) to evaluate nitrate trends in a vineyard managed both conventionally and using two different cover crops (Triticum durum and Vicia sativa cover crop). A 10 m-wide buffer strip was seeded with Lolium perenne at the bottom of the vineyard. Soil nitrate was measured monthly and nitrate movement was monitored by application of a 15N tracer to a narrow strip between the bottom of vineyard and the buffer and non-buffer strips. Lolium perenne biomass yield in the buffer strips and its isotopic nitrogen content were monitored. Vicia sativa cover crop management contributed with an excess of nitrogen, and the soil management determined the nitrogen content at the buffer areas. A 6 m buffer strip reduced the nitrate by 42% with and by 46% with a 9 m buffer strip. Thanks to catch crops, farmers can manage the N content and its distribution into the soil over the year, can reduced fertilizer wastage and reduce N pollution of surface and groundwater. © 2013 Author(s)

The use of straw mulch as a strategy to prevent extreme soil erosion rates in citrus orchard. A Rainfall simulation approach

Not only the Sahel (Haregeweyn et al., 2013), the deforested land (Borelli et al., 2013) the chinese Plateau are affected by intense soil erosion rates (Zhao et al., 2013). Soil erosion affect agriculture land (Cerdà et al., 2009), and citrus orchards are being seeing as one of the crops with the highest erosion rates due to the managements that avoid the catch crops, weeds or litter. Example of the research carried out on citrus orchards is found in the Mediterranean (Cerdà and Jurgensen, 2008; 2009; Cerdà et al., 2009a; 2009b; Cerdà et al., 2011; 2012) and in China (Wu et al., 1997; Xu et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2011; Wu et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2011; Lü et al., 2011; Xu et al., 2012), and they confirm the non sustainable soil losses measured. The land management in citrus plantations results in soil degradation too (Lu et al., 1997; Lü et al., 2012; Xu et al., 2012). The use of cover crops to reduce the soil losses (Lavigne et al., 2012; Le Bellec et al., 2012) and the use of residues such as dried citrus peel has been found successful. There is a need to find new plants or residues to protect the soils on citrus orchards. Agriculture produces a high amount of residues. The pruning can contribute with a valuable source of nutrients and a good soil protection. The leaves of the trees, and some parts of the plants, once harvest can contribute to reduce the soil losses. Due to the mechanization of the agriculture, and the reduction of the draft animals (mainly horses, mules, donkeys and oxen) the straw is being a residue instead of a resource. The Valencia region is the largest producer of citrus in Europe, and the largest exporter in the world. This citrus production region is located in the eastern cost of Spain where we can find the rice production area of the l’Albufera Lagoon paddy fields, the third largest production region in Spain. This means, a rice production region surrounded by the huge citrus production region. There, the rice straw is not used in the paddy fields after harvesting and the straw is being as a residue that damages the air quality when burnt, the water quality due to the decomposition and the methane production, and is not accepted in the field by the farmers. This is a new problem as few years ago the rice straw was use for animal feeding. Many attempts were developed in the last decade to remove and use the straw to avoid fires and water pollution (Iranzo et al., 2004; Silvestre et al., 2013). Our goal is to test if a residue such as the rice straw can be transformed as a resource: soil erosion control. Straw has been seen as a very efficient to reduce the water losses in agriculture land (García Moreno et al., 2013), the soil losses in fire affected land (Robichaud et al., 2013a; 2013b; Fernandez and Vega, 2014), and soil properties (García Orenes et al., 2009; 2010; Jordán et al., 2010; García Orenes 2012). Rainfall simulations under 55 mm h-1 rainfall intensity during one hour on 0,25 m2 plots were carried out on plots paired plots: bare and covered with straw. The plots covered with straw had different straw mulch cover: from 10 to 100 % cover and from 0,005 g m2 to 300 g m2. The results show a positive effect of the straw cover that show an exponential relation between the straw cover and weight with the sediment yield. Acknowledgements The research projects GL2008-02879/BTE, LEDDRA 243857 and RECARE supported this research

Updated systematic review and meta-analysis of the comparative data on colposuspensions, pubovaginal slings, and midurethral tapes in the surgical treatment of female stress urinary incontinence

Context Retropubic (RP-TVT) and transobturator miurethral (TO-TVT) midurethral sling (MUS) are popular surgical treatments for female stress urinary incontinence. The long-term efficacy and safety of the procedures is still a topic of intense clinical research and several randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been published in the last years Objective To evaluate the efficacy and safety of MUS compared with other surgical treatments for female stress urinary incontinence. Evidence acquisition A systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature was performed using the Medline, Scopus, and Web of Science databases to update our previously published analyses. Evidence synthesis Twenty-eight RCTs were identified. In total, the meta-analyses included 15 855 patients. Patients receiving MUS had significantly higher overall (odds ratio [OR]: 0.59, p = 0.0003) and objective (OR: 0.51, p = 0.001) cure rates than those receiving Burch colposuspension. Patients undergoing MUS and pubovaginal slings had similar cure rates. Patients treated with RT-TVT had higher subjective (OR: 0.83, p = 0.03) and objective (OR: 0.82, p = 0.01) cure rates than those receiving TO-TVT. However, the latter had a lower risk of intraoperative bladder or vaginal perforation (OR: 2.4, p = 0.0002), pelvic haematoma (OR: 2.61, p = 0.002), urinary tract infections (OR: 1.31, p = 0.04) and voiding lower urinary tract symptoms (OR: 1.66, p = 0.002). Sensitivity analyses limited to RCTs with follow-up durations >60 mo demonstrated similar outcomes for RP-TVT and TO-TVT. No significant differences in efficacy were identified comparing inside-to-out and outside-to-in TO-TVT but vaginal perforations were less common with the former (OR: 0.21, p = 0.0002). Conclusions The present analysis confirms the superiority of MUS over Burch colposuspension. The studies comparing insertion of RT-TVT and TO-TVT showed higher subjective and objective cure rates for the RP-TVT but at the cost of higher risks of some complications and voiding lower urinary tract symptoms. Efficacy of inside-out and outside-in techniques of TO-TVT insertion was similar, although the risk of vaginal perforation was lower in the inside-to-out TO-TVT. Patient summary Retropubic and transobturator midurethral slings are a popular treatment for female stress urinary incontinence. The available literature suggest that those slings are either more effective or safer than other older surgical procedures. Retropubic tapes are followed with slightly higher continence rates as compared with the transobturator tapes but are associated with higher risk of intra- and postoperative complications

Oral Signs and HLA-DQB1 1702 Haplotypes in the Celiac Paediatric Patient: A Preliminary Study.

Celiac disease (CD) diagnosis can be extremely challenging in the case of atypical patterns. In this context, oral signs seem to play a decisive role in arousing suspicion of these forms of the disease. At the same time, the different expressions of the HLA-DQB1 1702 allele apparently seem to facilitate the interpretation of signs and highlighted symptoms. The aim of this work was to verify whether it is possible to identify a correlation between the development of oral signs and different DQ2 haplotypes in celiac pediatric patients. 44 celiac patients with a medium age of 9.9 were studied. Oral examinations were performed in order to identify recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) and dental enamel defects (DED). The diagnosis of DED resulted as being related to allele expression (P value = 0.042) while it was impossible to find a similar correlation with RAS. When both oral signs were considered, there was an increase in correlation with HLA-DQB1 1702 expression (P value = 0.018). The obtained results identified both the fundamental role that dentists can play in early diagnosis of CD, as well as the possible role of HLA haplotype analysis in arousing suspicion of atypical forms of the disease

In situ Raman analyses of the soot oxidation reaction over nanostructured ceria-based catalysts

Abstract To reduce the emissions of internal combustion engines, ceria-based catalysts have been widely investigated as possible alternatives to the more expensive noble metals. In the present work, a set of four different ceria-based materials was prepared via hydrothermal synthesis, studying the effect of Cu and Mn as dopants both in binary and ternary oxides. In situ Raman analyses were carried out to monitor the behaviour of defect sites throughout thermal cycles and during the soot oxidation reaction. Despite ceria doped with 5% of Cu featured the highest specific surface area, reducibility and amount of intrinsic and extrinsic defects, a poor soot oxidation activity was observed through the standard activity tests. This result was confirmed by the calculation of soot conversion curves obtained through a newly proposed procedure, starting from the Raman spectra collected during the in situ tests. Moreover, Raman analyses highlighted that new defectiveness was produced on the Cu-doped catalyst at high temperature, especially after soot conversion, while a slight increase of the defect band and a total reversibility were observed in case of the ternary oxide and pure/Mn-doped ceria, respectively. The major increment was related to the extrinsic defects component; tests carried out in different atmospheres suggested the assignment of this feature to vacancy-free sites containing oxidized doping cations. Its increase at the end of the tests can be an evidence of peroxides and superoxides deactivation on catalysts presenting excessive oxygen vacancy concentrations. Instead, ceria doped with 5% of Mn exhibited the best soot oxidation activity, thanks to an intermediate density of oxygen vacancies and to its well-defined morphology

Highly absorbed X-ray binaries in the Small Magellanic Cloud

Many of the high mass X-ray binaries (HMXRBs) discovered in recent years in our Galaxy are characterized by a high absorption, most likely intrinsic to the system, which hampers their detection at the softest X-ray energies. We have undertaken a search for highly-absorbed X-ray sources in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) with a systematic analysis of 62 XMM-Newton SMC observations. We obtained a sample of 30 sources showing evidence for an equivalent hydrogen column density larger than 3x10^23 cm^-2. Five of these sources are clearly identified as HMXRBs: four were already known (including three X-ray pulsars) and one, XMM J005605.8-720012, reported here for the first time. For the latter, we present optical spectroscopy confirming the association with a Be star in the SMC. The other sources in our sample have optical counterparts fainter than magnitude ~16 in the V band, and many of them have possible NIR counterparts consistent with highly reddened early type stars in the SMC. While their number is broadly consistent with the expected population of background highly-absorbed active galactic nuclei, a few of them could be HMXRBs in which an early type companion is severely reddened by local material.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication by Astronomy & Astrophysic

Cerium‐Copper Oxides Synthesized in a Multi‐Inlet Vortex Reactor as Effective Nanocatalysts for CO and Ethene Oxidation Reactions

In this study, a set of CuCeOx catalysts was prepared via the coprecipitation method using a Multi‐Inlet Vortex Reactor: the Cu wt.% content is 5, 10, 20, 30 and 60. Moreover, pure CeO2 and CuO were synthesized for comparison purposes. The physico‐chemical properties of this set of samples were investigated by complementary techniques, e.g., XRD, N2 physisorption at −196 °C, Scanning Electron Microscopy, XPS, FT‐IR, Raman spectroscopy and H2‐TPR. Then, the CuCeOx catalysts were tested for the CO and ethene oxidation reactions. As a whole, all the prepared samples presented good catalytic performances towards the CO oxidation reaction (1000 ppm CO, 10 vol.% O2/N2): the most promising catalyst was the 20%CuCeOx (complete CO conversion at 125 °C), which exhibited a long‐term thermal stability. Similarly, the oxidative activity of the catalysts were evaluated using a gaseous mixture containing 500 ppm C2H4, 10 vol.% O2/N2. Accordingly, for the ethene oxidation reaction, the 20%CuCeOx catalyst evidenced the best catalytic properties. The elevated catalytic activity towards CO and ethene oxidation was mainly ascribed to synergistic interactions between CeO2 and CuO phases, as well as to the high amount of surface‐chemisorbed oxygen species and structural defects