Percutaneous Edge-to-Edge Mitral Valve Repair with the Mitraclip System in Barlow's Disease

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An Innovative, Open, Interoperable Citizen Engagement Cloud Platform for Smart Government and Users' Interaction

This paper introduces an open, interoperable, and cloud-computing-based citizen engagement platform for the management of administrative processes of public administrations, which also increases the engagement of citizens. The citizen engagement platform is the outcome of a 3-year Italian national project called PRISMA (Interoperable cloud platforms for smart government). The aim of the project is to constitute a new model of digital ecosystem that can support and enable new methods of interaction among public administrations, citizens, companies, and other stakeholders surrounding cities. The platform has been defined by the media as a flexible (enable the addition of any kind of application or service) and open (enable access to open services) Italian "cloud" that allows public administrations to access to a vast knowledge base represented as linked open data to be reused by a stakeholder community with the aim of developing new applications ("Cloud Apps") tailored to the specific needs of citizens. The platform has been used by Catania and Syracuse municipalities, two of the main cities of southern Italy, located in the Sicilian region. The fully adoption of the platform is rapidly spreading around the whole region (local developers have already used available application programming interfaces (APIs) to create additional services for citizens and administrations) to such an extent that other provinces of Sicily and Italy in general expressed their interest for its usage. The platform is available online and, as mentioned above, is open source and provides APIs for full exploitation.Comment: 23 pages, 7 figures, journal pape

Joining of CVD-SiC coated and uncoated fibre reinforced ceramic matrix composites with pre-sintered Ti3SiC2 MAX phase using Spark Plasma Sintering

CVD-SiC coated and uncoated ceramic matrix composites (Cf/SiC and SiCf/SiC) were joined to their counterparts with a pre-sintered Ti3SiC2 foil using Spark Plasma Sintering. For the first time pre-sintered Ti3SiC2 foil was used as a joining filler. The joining parameters were carefully selected to avoid the decomposition of Ti3SiC2 and the reaction between the joining filler and the CVD-SiC coating, which would have deteriorated the oxidation protective function of the coating. Conformal behaviour of the Ti3SiC2 foil during the diffusion joining and the infiltration of the joining filler into the surface cracks in the CVD -SiC coating allowed the filler to be more integrated with the matrix material. While diffusion bonding occurred during joining of the coated composites, a combination of both solid-state reaction and diffusion bonding was observed for the uncoated Cf/SiC composites. This produced the lower shear strength (19.1 MPa) when compared to the diffusion bonded CVD-SiC coated Cf/SiC (31.1 MPa

La renovación de la palabra en el bicentenario de la Argentina : los colores de la mirada lingüística

El libro reúne trabajos en los que se exponen resultados de investigaciones presentadas por investigadores de Argentina, Chile, Brasil, España, Italia y Alemania en el XII Congreso de la Sociedad Argentina de Lingüística (SAL), Bicentenario: la renovación de la palabra, realizado en Mendoza, Argentina, entre el 6 y el 9 de abril de 2010. Las temáticas abordadas en los 167 capítulos muestran las grandes líneas de investigación que se desarrollan fundamentalmente en nuestro país, pero también en los otros países mencionados arriba, y señalan además las áreas que recién se inician, con poca tradición en nuestro país y que deberían fomentarse. Los trabajos aquí publicados se enmarcan dentro de las siguientes disciplinas y/o campos de investigación: Fonología, Sintaxis, Semántica y Pragmática, Lingüística Cognitiva, Análisis del Discurso, Psicolingüística, Adquisición de la Lengua, Sociolingüística y Dialectología, Didáctica de la lengua, Lingüística Aplicada, Lingüística Computacional, Historia de la Lengua y la Lingüística, Lenguas Aborígenes, Filosofía del Lenguaje, Lexicología y Terminología

Joining of C/SiC composites by spark plasma sintering technique

CVD–SiC coated C/SiC composites (C/SiC) were joined by spark plasma sintering (SPS) by direct bonding with and without the aid of joining materials. A calcia-alumina based glass–ceramic (CA), a SiC + 5 wt% B4C mixture and pure Ti foils were used as joining materials in the non-direct bonding processes. Morphological and compositional analyses were performed on each joined sample. The shear strength of joined C/SiC was measured by a single lap test and found comparable to that of C/SiC

Joining of β-SiC by spark plasma sintering

2014AbstractSpark plasma sintering (SPS) was employed to join monolithic -SiC with or without titanium as intermediate joining material. Both the localizedand rapid heating contributed to the inherent energy saving of electric current assisted joining technique. The effects of uniaxial pressure and surfacepreparation were analyzed independently with respect to the flexural strength and the morphology of the joints. In particular samples polisheddown to 1 m and joined at 1900◦C for 5 min achieved the strength of the as received material. The failure occurred outside the joining interface,confirming the optimum quality of the joint. Pressure in combination with surface preparation was necessary to achieve perfect adhesion and porefree direct joining of SiC. The use of Ti foil as a joining material and pressure allowed joining of unpolished Si

Interfacial reaction between ZrNbHfTa foil and graphite: Formation of high-entropy carbide and the effect of heating rate on its microstructure

The interfacial reaction between graphite and a ZrNbHfTa foil using a spark plasma sintering (SPS) machine was studied. The interlayer was converted during the treatment into a high-entropy carbide by the reaction between the alloy and the graphite substrate. The degree of conversion depended on the processing time and temperature, but could be completed in only 16 s using the flash spark plasma sintering process. The final microstructure was strongly influenced by the heating rate. Flash-SPS processing (heating rate about 120°C/s) melted the alloy, which is then squeezed and deformed before its conversion to the high-entropy carbide (Zr,Nb,Hf,Ta)C. On the contrary, when conventional heating was used (i.e., 10°C/min) the metal reacted with the graphite substrate before it melted. This concept appears to be generally applicable to different graphite/metal systems, with particular implications in the fields of graphite/metal joining