Emotion in faces and voices : recognition and production by young and older adults

Older adults are less accurate than younger adults at emotion recognition. Given that deficits in emotion recognition have been associated with interpersonal conflict and, in turn, a reduced quality of life, understanding how older adults process emotion is vital. Thus, the research strategy of the current thesis was to investigate specific questions concerning how older adults process emotion information, e.g., how well older adults process a variety of emotional expression types and whether having multiple sources of expressive information will improve emotion recognition; how older adults extract information from emotional expressions; where problems might occur during the emotion recognition process; and whether poor emotion recognition is related to poor emotion production. My approach was different to the majority of other studies in that I tested multi-modal, dynamic spoken expressions in addition to the unimodal and static emotional expressions that are typically used for assessing emotion recognition. The first experiment assessed emotion recognition for auditory-visual (AV), visual-only (VO), and auditory-only (AO) speech stimuli (Chapter 2). The second series of experiments focused on VO expressions of emotion and investigated how older adults extract information from such expressions. The final two experiments investigated potential problems that older adults may encounter during the emotion recognition process. Taken together, the experiments in this thesis provide insight into the differences in the way older and younger adults process emotional expressions. Such insights can be used to develop reliable and ecologically valid tools to assess the emotion recognition ability of older adults

ArgoMoon: Italian CubeSat Technology to Record the Maiden Flight of SLS Towards the Moon

The ArgoMoon Nanosatellite, developed by the Italian company Argotec for the Italian Space Agency, will be launched in 2021, during the maiden flight of the NASA Space Launch System (SLS) named Artemis-1 mission. ArgoMoon will be the first microsatellite to be released by the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS) and it will acquire significant pictures of ICPS itself. It will perform proximity flight around the secondary stage of the launcher by means of autonomous imaging and tracking subsystems, thus allowing the CubeSat to remain close to the target, in order to capture high resolution pictures with technical and outreach purposes. After this first phase, orbital manoeuvers will move the satellite in a geocentric highly elliptic orbit, whose apogee is high enough to allow flybys and imaging of the Moon and the surrounding environment. This second part of the mission will last six months prior to the CubeSat disposal in a heliocentric orbit. ArgoMoon mission will allow testing the platform in the severe environment of Deep Space, imposing severe propulsive maneuvers and long-distance communications. The technical solutions to meet challenging requirements and mission objectives have been implemented by Argotec in a robust CubeSat platform

Older adults get masked emotion priming for happy but not angry faces : evidence for a positivity effect in early perceptual processing of emotional signals

In higher-level cognitive tasks, older compared to younger adults show a bias towards positive emotion information and away from negative information (a positivity effect). It is unclear whether this effect occurs in early perceptual processing. This issue is important for determining if the positivity effect is due to automatic rather than controlled processing. We tested this with older and younger adults on a positive/negative face emotion valence classification task using masked priming. Positive (happy) and negative (angry) face targets were preceded by masked repetition or valence primes with neutral face baselines. In Experiment 1, 30 younger and 30 older adults were tested with 50 ms primes. Younger adults showed repetition priming for both positive and negative targets. Older adults showed repetition priming for positive but not negative targets. Neither group showed valence priming. In Experiment 2, 30 older and 29 younger adults were tested with longer duration primes. Younger adults showed repetition priming for both positive and negative emotions, and no valence priming. Older adults only showed repetition and valence priming for positive targets. We proposed older adults’ lack of angry face priming was due to an early attention orienting strategy favouring happy expressions at the expense of angry ones

LICIACube on DART Mission: An Asteroid Impact Captured by Italian Small Satellite Technology

In the frame of the Planetary Defense program, NASA developed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission and the Italian Space Agency joined the effort. DART’s spacecraft will act as a kinetic impactor by deliberately crashing into the moonlet of Didymos binary system (i.e. Didymos-B) while the effects of the impact will be observed by a small satellite, the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroid (LICIACube) and ground-based telescopes. LICIACube, an Italian Space Agency (ASI) mission, will fly with a relative velocity of approximately 6.5 km/s and it will document the effects of the impact, the crater and the evolution of the plume generated by the collision. LICIACube will have to maintain the asteroid\u27s pointing at an angular speed of approximately 10 deg/s to fly-by the asteroid close to the Didymos-B surface. The images acquired by LICIACube will be processed onboard through the autonomous navigation algorithm to identify the asteroid system and control the satellite attitude. They will also help the scientific community and provide feedback to the Planetary Defense program, pioneered by the Space Agencies. This deep-space mission is based on a small scale but highly technological platform, whose development is involving both the Italian technical and scientific community

Acute thrombosis induced by drug-coated balloons dilation in neoatherosclerosis plaque, successfully treated with a MicroNet-covered stent: A Case Report and Literature Review

Preprint enviat per a la seva publicació en una revista científica: Journal of Endovascular Therapy Case Report (ISSN: 1526-6028, 1545-1550)Background The operator's ability in performing carotid stenting (CAS) has improved clinical outcomes. However, more than 3% of patients need to be treated again after CAS. Most of the cases requiring further intervention are affected by hyperplasia. The recommended procedure is the DEBalloon. On the other hand, the literature reports a small number of carotid neoatherosclerosis cases and is recommended to be treated using elective Micronet-covered stent. Discriminating between the two types of in-stent-restenosis ISR (hyperplasia or neoatherosclerosis) is critical for a positive outcome. Case summary We describe a case in which a patient treated with carotid stenting 8 years before, was diagnosed with ISR. Due to the development of neurological symptoms and progressive increases in Peak Systolic Velocity (PSV) eight years following carotid stenting, a DEBalloon was used in a carotid in-stent-restenosis (ISR) standard procedure. About ten minutes after the procedure, the patient developed hemiplegia consistent with the treated carotid territory. The implantation of a MicroNet-covered stent excluded the thrombus and reverted symptoms with a normal MR control at 24 h. Conclusion This case illustrates that when in-stent stenosis evolves years after the stent implantation, neoatherosclerosis should be assessed, and a MicroNet-covered stent should be considered

LICIACube: CubeSat Unique Engineering Challenges on the DART Mission

The NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft launched November 24, 2021 carrying LICIACube, a 6U CubeSat. As a low-cost mission utilizing a ship-and-shoot launch campaign during a global pandemic, the DART and LICIACube teams encountered many unique engineering challenges during integration and test (I&T). This paper explores both the successes and lessons learned in reducing the engineering risk from the procurement of an additional flight dispenser to providing and sharing of EM hardware for providing remote support of various tests. The DART mission is led by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) in Laurel, Maryland. DART is an on-orbit demonstration of asteroid deflection using the kinetic impactor technique on a binary near-Earth asteroid system called Didymos. The system is composed of two asteroids: the larger asteroid Didymos (diameter: 780 meters, 0.48 miles), and the smaller moonlet asteroid, Dimorphos (diameter: 160 meters, 525 feet), which orbits the larger asteroid. The DART spacecraft, built at JHU/APL, is set to impact Dimorphos nearly head-on (in the fall of 2022), shortening the time it takes the small asteroid moonlet to orbit Didymos by several minutes. The Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroids (LICIACube), DART’s companion CubeSat, was contributed to the DART mission by the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) and built by Argotec in Turin, Italy. LICIACube will be deployed from the DART spacecraft roughly ten days prior to DART\u27s impact to capture images of the event and its effects. The CubeSat will provide imagery documentation of the impact, as well as in situ observation of the impact site and resultant ejecta plume. The design of the LICIACube spacecraft is based on a 6U platform and carries two instruments: LEIA (LICIACube Explorer Imaging for Asteroid), a narrow field panchromatic camera to acquire images from long distance with a high spatial resolution and LUKE (LICIACube Unit Key Explorer), a wide field RGB camera, allowing a multicolor analysis of the asteroidal environment

LICIACube Mission: The Fastest Fly-By Ever Done by a CubeSat

As SmallSats are gathering an ever-increasing importance for all types of space missions, they are asked more often to operate in harshest environments and to complete the most complex tasks. One of these demanding technical challenges arises in the frame of the planetary defense. Space missions towards asteroids have garnered the due attention in recent years and, in this regard, NASA has developed the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, in which the Italy will lend its contribution. While DART acts as a kinetic impactor deflecting the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos, the moon of the targeted binary system Didymos, the Light Italian CubeSat for Imaging of Asteroid (LICIACube) collects and gathers valuable images of the effect of the DART impact on the rocky body. LICIACube will allow to study the structure and evolution of the ejecta plume resulting from the impact, and to model both impacted and non-impacted sides of Dimorphos. LICIACube is an Italian Space Agency (ASI) project, whose design, integration and testing have been assigned to the aerospace company Argotec. The scientific team is enriched by University of Bologna team, supporting the orbit determination and the satellite navigation, Polytechnic of Milan, for mission analysis support and optimization and INAF (National Institute of Astrophysics), which provides support in the scientific operations of the satellite, instrument calibrations and data exploitation. This work focuses on the fly-by of LICIACube which will be accomplished using the imaging capabilities provided by theArgotecHAWK-6 platform and by the autonomous navigation system. In order to acquire high-resolution images, LICIACube approaches Dimorphos at a relative distance of 55km. The very close fly-by, the high relative velocity of ∼7 km/s with respect to the asteroid and the need to keep LICIACube camera pointed at Dimorphos make the mission very challenging. In addition, since the binary asteroid system is ∼10 million kilometers away from Earth, the fly-by has to be performed with no real time commanding. As a result, LICIACube shall be able to autonomously analyze all information from its sensors to track the asteroid. The evaluation and subsequent solutions to this problem are presented in this paper, as well as a unit-level description of the parts included in the autonomous navigation system. Finally, an overview of the verification of both unit-level and system-level strategies is outlined