Calibratable pressure switch Final technical report

Design and fabrication of electronic pressure switche

Characterization and digital restauration of XIV-XV centuries written parchments by means of non-destructive techniques. Three case studies

Parchment is the primary writing medium of the majority of documents with cultural importance. Unfortunately, this material suffers of several mechanisms of degradation that affect its chemical-physical structure and the readability of text. Due to the unique and delicate character of these objects, the use of nondestructive techniques is mandatory. In this work, three partially degraded handwritten parchments dating back to the XIV-XV centuries were analyzed by means of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, µ-ATR Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and reflectance and UV-induced fluorescence spectroscopy. 'e elemental and molecular results provided the identification of the inks, pigments, and superficial treatments. In particular, all manuscripts have been written with iron gall inks, while the capital letters have been realized with cinnabar and azurite. Furthermore, multispectral UV fluorescence imaging and multispectral VIS-NIR imaging proved to be a good approach for the digital restoration of manuscripts that suffer from the loss of inked areas or from the presence of brown spotting. Indeed, using ultraviolet radiation and collecting the images at different spectral ranges is possible to enhance the readability of the text, while by illuminating with visible light and by collecting the images at longer wavelengths, the hiding effect of brown spots can be attenuated

Characterization and digital restauration of XIV-XV centuries written parchments by means of non-destructive techniques. Three case studies

Parchment is the primary writing medium of the majority of documents with cultural importance. Unfortunately, this material suffers of several mechanisms of degradation that affect its chemical-physical structure and the readability of text. Due to the unique and delicate character of these objects, the use of nondestructive techniques is mandatory. In this work, three partially degraded handwritten parchments dating back to the XIV-XV centuries were analyzed by means of X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, µ-ATR Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and reflectance and UV-induced fluorescence spectroscopy. 'e elemental and molecular results provided the identification of the inks, pigments, and superficial treatments. In particular, all manuscripts have been written with iron gall inks, while the capital letters have been realized with cinnabar and azurite. Furthermore, multispectral UV fluorescence imaging and multispectral VIS-NIR imaging proved to be a good approach for the digital restoration of manuscripts that suffer from the loss of inked areas or from the presence of brown spotting. Indeed, using ultraviolet radiation and collecting the images at different spectral ranges is possible to enhance the readability of the text, while by illuminating with visible light and by collecting the images at longer wavelengths, the hiding effect of brown spots can be attenuated

A New Look at Judicial Impact: Attorneys\u27 Fees in Securities Class Actions After Goldberger v. Integrated Resources, Inc.

This Essay attempts to address three questions in the extant judicial impact literature. First, the existing studies use rather insensitive measures of compliance and thus may fail to identify instances of subtle resistance to higher court rulings. A second limitation in the judicial impact literature lies in its restrained focus. Judicial politics in general and the judicial impact literature in particular tend to have a “high court” bias. Also, scholars studying judicial politics less frequently examine the ultimate consumers of judicial policies—the members of society who are subject to the rule the court has announced

A New Look at Judicial Impact: Attorneys\u27 Fees in Securities Class Actions After Goldberger v. Integrated Resources, Inc.

Judicial impact studies have generally found widespread compliance by lower courts. Often, however, these studies employ relatively insensitive measures of compliance, limit their focus to compliance with Supreme Court precedent, and only occasionally examine the impact of judicial decisions on the ultimate consumers of those rulings - the members of society who are subject to them. Significant questions thus remain, such as whether and to what extent lower courts in fact comply with precedent and what if any role fear of reversal plays in compliance. To address these gaps, we use regression analysis to examine how the district courts in the Second Circuit responded to the decision of the Court of Appeals in Goldberger v. Integrated Resources, Inc., a case that mandated strict scrutiny by trial court judges of attorneys\u27 fee applications in class actions. Contrary to what might be expected, Goldberger is not correlated with a general decline in fee awards or fee requests or increased judicial scrutiny of requests. Instead, we find that as settlement size increases, both fee requests and fee awards rise at a slower rate in the cases subject to Goldberger while judicial scrutiny increases. As large settlements are the most likely to be appealed, this finding supports the proposition that compliance is tied to the probability of appeal and reversal

A New Look at Judicial Impact: Attorneys\u27 Fees in Securities Class Actions After Goldberger v. Integrated Resources, Inc.

This Essay attempts to address three questions in the extant judicial impact literature. First, the existing studies use rather insensitive measures of compliance and thus may fail to identify instances of subtle resistance to higher court rulings. A second limitation in the judicial impact literature lies in its restrained focus. Judicial politics in general and the judicial impact literature in particular tend to have a “high court” bias. Also, scholars studying judicial politics less frequently examine the ultimate consumers of judicial policies—the members of society who are subject to the rule the court has announced

SEEDS - THE INTERNATIONAL MASTER PROGRAM FOR PREPARING THE YOUNG SYSTEMS ENGINEERS FOR SPACE EXPLORATION

The SEEDS initiative originated by Politecnico di Torino and Thales Alenia Space Italy in 2005. It aimed at establishing a Post Graduate International Master Course in Space Exploration and Development Systems "SEEDS", to offer an opportunity to young engineers to get prepared for the future of Europe in space exploration. The SEEDS project has been shared with Supaero Toulouse in France and with University at Bremen (together with ZARM) in Germany, as the three European towns (Torino, Toulouse and Bremen) have a long common tradition of space activities at both the industrial and academic level and represent three poles of the European cooperation in space programs. The SEEDS course comprises two different steps in sequence: an initial Learning Phase and a Project Work Phase. Both the Learning and the Project Work Phase pursue a multidisciplinary approach, where all specialized disciplines are blended together and integrated to enable the students to acquire the system view and then to accomplish the conceptual design, through the Systems Engineering approach, of a selected case-study. The distinguishing feature of SEEDS is without any doubt the Project Work activity, performed by all students together under the supervision of academic and industrial Tutors, coordinated by the Education Project Manager. Main objective of the Project Work is to train the students on the basic principles of the System Engineering Design, through their application on a well defined project related to a specific space exploration mission. The Project Work includes the Preparatory Work, during which the students, starting from the definition of the mission statement, focus on the identification of the complete architecture of the space exploration mission, and the Conceptual Design activities, performed in the three European sites to develop a limited number of building blocks identified during the Preparatory Work. The first year of activity started in November 2005, with a Plenary Opening which took place at the ESA-ERASMUS Centre, Noordwijk, with the full support of the Human Space-Flight Microgravity and Exploration Directorate of ESA. Five years of activities have passed since then and five project works have been successfully completed, dealing with various space exploration themes. This paper focuses on the description of the SEEDS course and on the main results achieved in terms of project work activities and development of the future space workforce. The positive experience of five years of SEEDS is brought to evidence and the lessons learned are discussed in view of the SEEDS continuatio

Overview of the benefitsand potential issues of the nonavalent HPV vaccine

HPV-related diseases affect anogenital and oropharyngeal regions, heavily affecting the psychosexual dimension of both male and female individuals. HPV vaccination programs based on a bivalent or quadrivalent vaccine have opened broad perspectives for primary prevention. A nonavalent HPV vaccine (9vHPV), covering nine genotypes (HPV6, HPV11, HPV16, HPV18, HPV31, HPV33, HPV45, HPV52, and HPV58), might provide further improvement in terms of direct protection. In the present report, efficacy and safety data from 9vHPV vaccine development programs are examined. Efficacy data come from a pivotal trial, which was conducted among women aged 16–26 years randomly assigned to receive either the 9vHPV or the quadrivalent HPV (4vHPV) vaccine. The 9vHPV vaccine was shown to have potential benefits as compared with 4vHPV, increasing the overall estimated rate of prevention to 90% for cervical cancer and up to 80% for precancerous cervical lesions. For all other HPV-related pre-invasive and invasive lesions, 9vHPV showed potentially greater disease reduction, depending on the anatomic region examined. Thus, the 9vHPV vaccine shows clinical potential for the prevention of HPV-related diseases in both sexes. Future adoption of 9vHPV will depend on factors including market price, cost-effectiveness data, use of a two-dose schedule, and safety and efficacy monitoring in real-life programs