Mars One-Year Mission Craft

A human Mars mission is more challenging to astronauts than the Apollo mission because of travel time, life support requirements, and the space environment. Although plans for Mars exploration by NASA and SpaceX based on conventional rockets have been presented, there are considerations that suggest alternatives for the mid-or long-term. The purpose of this paper is to outline a fast mission enabled by advanced (nuclear) propulsion and by internationally shared technology. Whether the destination is the Mars surface or Phobos, for a chemical powered spacecraft, the round trip takes about 990 days, including a 480-day surface stay, compared to only 370 days, including a 41-day surface stay, for the nuclear-powered spacecraft assumed here. Since nuclear propulsion can provide higher speed than chemical, the radiation dose can be drastically reduced. The logistics of such a mission involve one or more cargo craft that must precede the astronauts. Ballistic entry into Mars’ atmosphere depends on accurate knowledge of its features, to date poorly known, that may result in uncertainty in landing coordinates. For a single vehicle, this is not critical, but for a human crew ballistic landing kilometers away from cargo is unacceptable: walking for anything but the shortest distance cannot be afforded with current space suits. In this context, the concept of a modest L/D maneuvering cargo glider based on the past Russian “Kliper” is recommended and developed to ensure landing within a hundred meters of each spacecraft. The crewed lander vehicle is based on the high L/D, inherently stable USAF FDL-7C/D hypersonic glider experience

Sport e diritto

Rappresentazione del legame storico-giuridico fra ordinamento sportivo e generale

STILBENE ST18 AND TERFENYL TR4: IN VITRO ACTIVITY AGAINST TRYPANOSOMA CRUZI

Chagas disease is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which is transmitted to animals and people by insect vectors that are found only in the Americas. Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis are life-threatening illnesses caused by the protozoan parasites Leishmania spp. and Trypanosoma cruzi, respectively. They are known as “neglected diseases” due to the lack of effective drug treatments and the scarcity of research work devoted to them. Therefore, the development of novel and effective drugs is an important and urgent need. Natural products are an important source of bioactive molecules for the development of new drugs. Recently, studies showed an interesting cytotoxic action of Stilbene ST18 and the Terphenyl TR4 compounds in Leishmania. In this study, we evaluated the in vitro trypanocidal activity of ST18 and TR4 and Nifurtimox, drug used for the treatment of Chagas disease. In addition, we evaluated the compounds action in infected macrophages with Trypanosoma cruzi. Results showed that three compounds exhibited significant activity against Trypanosoma compared to Nifurtimox. ST18 and TR4 compounds inhibited Trypanosoma growth with IC50 values of 4.5 and 32 μM, respectively. The treatment of infected macrophages with trypanosomes with the IC90 compounds showed a reduction of infection compared to control: ST18 reduced the infected cells to 52 %, TR4 reduced the infected cells to 63%. In conclusion, these news compounds could be considered as promising lead drugs for the development of new therapies for the treatment of Chagas disease

High-Speed Railways and Firms Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment

The focus of this study is to assess the causal impact of the connection of a local area to a high-speed rail network (HSR) on firms' total factor productivity (TFP). The quasi-random location of the HSR station in the Italian city of Reggio Emilia is exploited in a Difference-in Differences (DiD) research design applied to a large sample of firms, observed over the period 2010-2018. The results suggest that the opening of the HSR station improved treated firms' TFP of about 5%; in particular, such effect is larger for firms closer to the HSR station and slightly increases over the sample period. We also find that the impact of the connection to the HSR station is heterogeneous across industries and depends on firms' size and past productivity. Overall results are robust to a large number of sensitivity checks and falsification tests

Discriminating Pathological Voice From Healthy Voice Using Cepstral Peak Prominence Smoothed Distribution in Sustained Vowel

This paper deals with cepstral peak prominence smoothed (CPPS) distribution and its descriptive statistics as possible indicators of vocal health status. A total of 41 voluntary patients and 35 control subjects participated in the experiment: all of them followed the same protocol, which includes three repetitions of the sustained vowel /a/ simultaneously acquired with a microphone in air and a contact sensor, the perceptual assessment of voice quality, and the videolaringoscopy examination. The fifth percentile and the standard deviation of CPPS distribution were the parameters included in the best logistic regression models for the microphone in air and the contact sensor, respectively. The selected CPPS parameters had a strong to good discrimination power: an area under curve of 0.95 and 0.87 has been found for the microphone in air and for the contact sensor, respectively. For each CPPS parameter, the repeatability has been also estimated and the Monte Carlo method has been implemented for the uncertainty evaluation of the discrimination threshold. Furthermore, preliminary recommendations for better accuracy and repeatability of future studies are provided: analyses on the main CPPS influence quantities and on the effect of the frequency content of the signal spectrum on the CPPS parameters have been provided

Fear and anxiety related to COVID-19 pandemic may predispose to perinatal depression in Italy

The COVID-19 pandemic situation significantly affected the mental health of the general and clinical population. However, few studies investigated which COVID-19-related psychopathological determinants may predispose to perinatal depression. We evaluated the impact of COVID-19 related anxiety and fear on perinatal depression in Italy. We retrospectively screened 184 perinatal outpatients afferent to Perinatal Mental Health outpatient service, during March 2020-March 2021, by administering the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), the Fear of COVID-19 (FCV-19-S) and the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS). Among these, 85 patients agreed to be recruited in the present study. The mean EPDS score was 9.0, experiencing a clinically relevant perinatal depression in 45.7% of the sample. The mean FCV-19-S score was 15.0 and CAS was 1.7. Linear regression analyses demonstrated that FCV-19-S and CAS scores statistically significantly predicted EPDS total scores. A positive significant correlation was reported between FCV-19-S and EPDS and between CAS and EPDS. During the COVID-19 pandemic, women in their perinatal period, independently of previous psychiatric history, experienced increased levels of anxiety, fear and psychological distress, due to subsequent isolation, quarantine, lockdown and deprivation of their normal social support. Further preventive and screening strategies should be implemented in order to early identify at-risk pregnant and puerperal women during the COVID-19 pandemic