Neuroprosthetic Haptic Interface and Haptic Stimulation: Neuromorphic Microtransduction and EEG Alpha Variations

According to the recent studies on the psychophysiology of touch, a haptic effector designed in a neuromorphic way was projected, designing an electronic card as to be able to deliver variable signals over time and in intensity. The two-dimensional arrays of micro-actuators were made either with planar geometry or with three-dimensional, semi-spherical or “dome” geometry. Subsequently, on both the behavioral and the electrophysiological level the haptic sensation received by the effector was evaluated on 6 subjects and compared to real stimulations of different grains (Paper). During the various stimulations the subject was in a state of Resting State (RS). Each stimulation had a frequency range ranging from 2 to 500 Hz on 2 and 5 s. Analysis of behavioral responses and the alpha rhythm in RS showed significant differences for low frequencies vs Paper. RS highlighted differences in ROIs on the various frequency distributions, especially low frequencies in Frontal ROI. This pilot study indicates that the best frequencies for a haptic simulation are between a range from 20 Hz to 166 Hz

Innovative experiences in teaching conservation. Involving communities’ interests on preservationtopics by fast investigations and social media dissemination

Since 2019, the authors carried out a didactical experience trough the Preservation Studio workshop in the historical center of Vimercate, a town in the north east area of Milan, implementing a convention agreement between the Municipality and the Atheneum. The convention was arranged in order to set the relationship between the three academic courses of the Politecnico di Milano and the administration of Vimercate, supporting the teaching staff by providing ac- cessibility to various services and some public properties located in the city-cen- ter. Thanks to this kind of agreement, the courses could be supported in their activities by document centers, public associations and the members of the local community, while the teaching staff offered a constant sharing of the main activ- ities by social media and periodical disseminations through public lectures. After maturing several years of didactical workshops on the main buildings of the his- torical center of Vimercate, this paper shows the results collected with the stu- dios: the active class strategies, the on-site survey campaigns, the evolution of the results observed by year after year inspections, ND testing activities and local community involvement. The impact coming from the researches developed by the preservation classes and specific in depth studies realized by graduation thesis showed an increasing participation of the community to the topics connected to the city center: from conservation policies to future uses, historical buildings reached the attention of the people through the development of a new sensibility and perception of new values associated to the local architectural heritage

Factors associated with invasive lung aspergillosis and the significance of positive aspergillus culture after liver transplantation

From January 1981 to December 1990, 2180 patients underwent orthotopic liver transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh. Thirty-two patients (1.5%) were identified with invasive aspergillosis (29 lung, 2 intraabdominal, 1 meningitis). Of 29 patients with invasive lung disease, only 23 (79%) had positive culture (Aspergillus fumigatus, 20; Aspergillus flavus, 3). Forty-eight variables were analyzed and compared in 23 patients with invasive disease with positive cultures and 9 patients with colonization only. The variables associated with pulmonary invasive disease, by univariate analysis, were surgical time (P =.03), presence of laparotomies (P =.02), higher creatinine level at time of Aspergillus isolation (P =.01), and use of OKT3 (P =.02). However, in a multivariate analysis, only the last two (creatinine, OKT3) were associated with invasive lung aspergillosis. Of 4 patients with positive abdominal wound culture, 2 had local invasive aspergillosis. Therefore, positive cultures of Aspergillus organisms from respiratory secretions and wound drainage may represent invasive disease and should not be ignored. © 1992 the University of Chicago

Quasi-local first law of black-hole dynamics

A property well known as the first law of black hole is a relation among infinitesimal variations of parameters of stationary black holes. We consider a dynamical version of the first law, which may be called the first law of black hole dynamics. The first law of black hole dynamics is derived without assuming any symmetry or any asymptotic conditions. In the derivation, a definition of dynamical surface gravity is proposed. In spherical symmetry it reduces to that defined recently by one of the authors (SAH).Comment: Latex, 8 pages; version to appear in Class. Quantum Gra

In silico karyotyping of chromosomally polymorphic malaria mosquitoes in the Anopheles gambiae complex

Chromosomal inversion polymorphisms play an important role in adaptation to environmental heterogeneities. For mosquito species in the Anopheles gambiae complex that are significant vectors of human malaria, paracentric inversion polymorphisms are abundant and are associated with ecologically and epidemiologically important phenotypes. Improved understanding of these traits relies on determining mosquito karyotype, which currently depends upon laborious cytogenetic methods whose application is limited both by the requirement for specialized expertise and for properly preserved adult females at specific gonotrophic stages. To overcome this limitation, we developed sets of tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) inside inversions whose biallelic genotype is strongly correlated with inversion genotype. We leveraged 1,347 fully sequenced An. gambiae and Anopheles coluzzii genomes in the Ag1000G database of natural variation. Beginning with principal components analysis (PCA) of population samples, applied to windows of the genome containing individual chromosomal rearrangements, we classified samples into three inversion genotypes, distinguishing homozygous inverted and homozygous uninverted groups by inclusion of the small subset of specimens in Ag1000G that are associated with cytogenetic metadata. We then assessed the correlation between candidate tag SNP genotypes and PCA-based inversion genotypes in our training sets, selecting those candidates with >80% agreement. Our initial tests both in held-back validation samples from Ag1000G and in data independent of Ag1000G suggest that when used for in silico inversion genotyping of sequenced mosquitoes, these tags perform better than traditional cytogenetics, even for specimens where only a small subset of the tag SNPs can be successfully ascertained

Rainich Conditions in (2 + 1)- Dimensional Gravity

In (3 + 1) spacetime dimensions, the Rainich conditions are a set of equations expressed solely in terms of the metric tensor which are equivalent to the Einstein- Maxwell equations for non-null electromagnetic fields. Here we provide the analogous conditions for (2 + 1)-dimensional gravity coupled to electromagnetism. Both the non-null and null cases are treated. The construction of these conditions is based upon reducing the problem to that of gravity coupled to a scalar field, which we have treated elsewhere. These conditions can be easily extended to other theories of (2 + 1)-dimensional gravity. For example, we apply the geometrization conditions to topologically massive gravity coupled to the electromagnetic field and obtain a family of plane-fronted wave solutions