5,028 research outputs found
Scan to BIM for 3D reconstruction of the papal basilica of saint Francis in Assisi In Italy
The historical building heritage, present in the most of Italian cities centres, is, as part of the construction sector, a working potential,
but unfortunately it requires planning of more complex and problematic interventions. However, policies to support on the existing
interventions, together with a growing sensitivity for the recovery of assets, determine the need to implement specific studies and to
analyse the specific problems of each site. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the methodology and the results obtained from
integrated laser scanning activity in order to have precious architectural information useful not only from the cultural heritage point
of view but also to construct more operative and powerful tools, such as BIM (Building Information Modelling) aimed to the
management of this cultural heritage. The Papal Basilica and the Sacred Convent of Saint Francis in Assisi in Italy are, in fact,
characterized by unique and complex peculiarities, which require a detailed knowledge of the sites themselves to ensure visitor’s
security and safety. For such a project, we have to take in account all the people and personnel normally present in the site, visitors
with disabilities and finally the needs for cultural heritage preservation and protection. This aim can be reached using integrated
systems and new technologies, such as Internet of Everything (IoE), capable of connecting people, things (smart sensors, devices and
actuators; mobile terminals; wearable devices; etc.), data/information/knowledge and processes to reach the desired goals. The IoE
system must implement and support an Integrated Multidisciplinary Model for Security and Safety Management (IMMSSM) for the
specific context, using a multidisciplinary approach
Cosmological implications of an evolutionary quantum gravity
The cosmological implications of an evolutionary quantum gravity are analyzed
in the context of a generic inhomogeneous model. The Schr\"{o}dinger problem is
formulated and solved in the presence of a scalar field, an ultrarelativistic
matter and a perfect gas regarded as the dust-clock. Considering the actual
phenomenology, it is shown how the evolutionary approach overlaps the
Wheeler-DeWitt one.Comment: 4 pages; to appear in the proceedings of the II Stueckelberg
Workshop, Int.J.Mod.Phys.A, references adde
A Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi cosmological wormhole
We present a new analytical solution of the Einstein field equations
describing a wormhole shell of zero thickness joining two
Lema{\i}tre-Tolman-Bondi universes, with no radial accretion. The material on
the shell satisfies the energy conditions and, at late times, the shell becomes
comoving with the dust-dominated cosmic substratum.Comment: 5 pages, latex, no figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Automated diagnosis of encephalitis in pediatric patients using EEG rhythms and slow biphasic complexes
Slow biphasic complexes (SBC) have been identified in the EEG of patients suffering for inflammatory brain diseases. Their amplitude, location and frequency of appearance were found to correlate with the severity of encephalitis. Other characteristics of SBCs and of EEG traces of patients could reflect the grade of pathology. Here, EEG rhythms are investigated together with SBCs for a better characterization of encephalitis. EEGs have been acquired from pediatric patients: ten controls and ten encephalitic patients. They were split by neurologists into five classes of different severity of the pathology. The relative power of EEG rhythms was found to change significantly in EEGs labeled with different severity scores. Moreover, a significant variation was found in the last seconds before the appearance of an SBC. This information and quantitative indexes characterizing the SBCs were used to build a binary classification decision tree able to identify the classes of severity. True classification rate of the best model was 76.1% (73.5% with leave-one-out test). Moreover, the classification errors were among classes with similar severity scores (precision higher than 80% was achieved considering three instead of five classes). Our classification method may be a promising supporting tool for clinicians to diagnose, assess and make the follow-up of patients with encephalitis
Repurposing designed mutants: a valuable strategy for computer-aided laccase engineering – the case of POXA1b
The broad specificity of laccases, a direct consequence of their shallow binding site, makes this class of enzymes a suitable template to build specificity toward putative substrates. In this work, a computational methodology that accumulates beneficial interactions between the enzyme and the substrate in productive conformations is applied to oxidize 2,4-diamino-benzenesulfonic acid with POXA1b laccase. Although the experimental validation of two designed variants yielded negative results, most likely due to the hard oxidizability of the target substrate, molecular simulations suggest that a novel polar binding scaffold was designed to anchor negatively charged groups. Consequently, the oxidation of three such molecules, selected as representative of different classes of substances with different industrial applications, significantly improved. According to molecular simulations, the reason behind such an improvement lies in the more productive enzyme–substrate binding achieved thanks to the designed polar scaffold. In the future, mutant repurposing toward other substrates could be first carried out computationally, as done here, testing molecules that share some similarity with the initial target. In this way, repurposing would not be a mere safety net (as it is in the laboratory and as it was here) but rather a powerful approach to transform laccases into more efficient multitasking enzymes.This work was funded by INDOX (KBBE-2013-7-613549) European project and CTQ2013-48287-R Spanish National Project.
V. G. and E. M. acknowledge Università degli Studi di Napoli and Generalitat de Catalunya for their respective predoctoral fellowships.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Light-cone averages in a swiss-cheese universe
We analyze a toy swiss-cheese cosmological model to study the averaging
problem. In our model, the cheese is the EdS model and the holes are
constructed from a LTB solution. We study the propagation of photons in the
swiss-cheese model, and find a phenomenological homogeneous model to describe
observables. Following a fitting procedure based on light-cone averages, we
find that the the expansion scalar is unaffected by the inhomogeneities. This
is because of spherical symmetry. However, the light-cone average of the
density as a function of redshift is affected by inhomogeneities. The effect
arises because, as the universe evolves, a photon spends more and more time in
the (large) voids than in the (thin) high-density structures. The
phenomenological homogeneous model describing the light-cone average of the
density is similar to the concordance model. Although the sole source in the
swiss-cheese model is matter, the phenomenological homogeneous model behaves as
if it has a dark-energy component. Finally, we study how the equation of state
of the phenomenological model depends on the size of the inhomogeneities, and
find that the equation-of-state parameters w_0 and w_a follow a power-law
dependence with a scaling exponent equal to unity. That is, the equation of
state depends linearly on the distance the photon travels through voids. We
conclude that within our toy model, the holes must have a present size of about
250 Mpc to be able to mimic the concordance model.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures; replaced to fit the version accepted for
publication in Phys. Rev.
The Hawking temperature of expanding cosmological black holes
In the context of a debate on the correct expression of the Hawking
temperature of an expanding cosmological black hole, we show that the correct
expression in terms of the Hawking-Hayward quasi-local energy m of the hole is
T=1/(8\pi m(t)). This expression holds for comoving black holes and agrees with
a recent proposal by Saida, Harada, and Maeda.Comment: 5 latex pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. D. Some references adde
On cosmological observables in a swiss-cheese universe
Photon geodesics are calculated in a swiss-cheese model, where the cheese is
made of the usual Friedmann-Robertson-Walker solution and the holes are
constructed from a Lemaitre-Tolman-Bondi solution of Einstein's equations. The
observables on which we focus are the changes in the redshift, in the
angular-diameter--distance relation, in the luminosity-distance--redshift
relation, and in the corresponding distance modulus. We find that redshift
effects are suppressed when the hole is small because of a compensation effect
acting on the scale of half a hole resulting from the special case of spherical
symmetry. However, we find interesting effects in the calculation of the
angular distance: strong evolution of the inhomogeneities (as in the approach
to caustic formation) causes the photon path to deviate from that of the FRW
case. Therefore, the inhomogeneities are able to partly mimic the effects of a
dark-energy component. Our results also suggest that the nonlinear effects of
caustic formation in cold dark matter models may lead to interesting effects on
photon trajectories.Comment: 25 pages, 21 figures; replaced to fit the version accepted for
publication in Phys. Rev.
Distribution of G-concurrence of random pure states
Average entanglement of random pure states of an N x N composite system is
analyzed. We compute the average value of the determinant D of the reduced
state, which forms an entanglement monotone. Calculating higher moments of the
determinant we characterize the probability distribution P(D). Similar results
are obtained for the rescaled N-th root of the determinant, called
G-concurrence. We show that in the limit this quantity becomes
concentrated at a single point G=1/e. The position of the concentration point
changes if one consider an arbitrary N x K bipartite system, in the joint limit
, K/N fixed.Comment: RevTeX4, 11 pages, 4 Encapsuled PostScript figures - Introduced new
results, Section II and V have been significantly improved - To appear on PR
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