The role of block shape and slenderness in the preliminary estimation of rockfall propagation

Among the wide range of variables that influence the falling process of blocks during a rockfall event, the shape of the block often plays a crucial role. Spherical-like blocks typically reach longer runout distances while elongated and plate volumes stop earlier. Nevertheless, with reference to runout modelling and hazard analyses, the shape of the block was disregarded for very long time until the last two decades when more rigorous rockfall models were developed. Nowadays fully 3D rigid body models and particle-based ones can take into account different and complex aspects related to block geometry and size (e.g. shape, change of shape, slenderness, fragmentation, etc.) when in site-specific applications are addressed. On the other hand, when the rockfall analysis is extended over large areas, simplified runout models can be used for preliminary, quick analyses, aimed at highlighting the most critical zones of the area. In this case, the variables that influence the rockfall process should be included in the analysis in equivalent terms. Among these simplified models, the Cone Method allows to reduce the runout phase to an equivalent sliding motion of the block along an inclined plane. The inclination of this plane with respect to the horizontal plane (i.e. the energy angle ) can be related to both block and slope properties of the real rockfall case. The authors of this paper developed a methodology for the estimation of the energy angle as a function of the condition of the site under analysis (characteristics of the blocks and the slope), to be used for preliminary forecasting analyses at medium-small scales. To this aim, a series of parametric analyses have been carried out to quantify the role of each variable on the energy angle. In this paper, the role of block shape and slenderness (i.e. the ratio between the height and the width of the rock block) is analysed via several propagation analyses carried out on simplified synthetic slopes by using the fully 3D RAMMS::ROCKFALL model. The results were finally statistically treated in terms of energy angles in order to take into account the variability of rockfall trajectories and provide a contribution for the estimation of the parameters within preliminary analyses based on the Cone Method

Caching at the edge in high energy-efficient wireless access networks

In the next generation of Radio Access Networks (RANs), Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is considered a promising solution to reduce the latency and the traffic load of backhaul links. It consists of the placement of servers, which provide computing platforms and storage, directly at each Base Station (BS) of these networks. In this paper, the caching feature of this paradigm is considered in a portion of a RAN, powered by a renewable energy generator system, energy batteries and the power grid. The performance of the caching in the RAN is analysed for different traffic characteristics, as well as for different capacity of the caches and different spread of it. Finally, we verify that the usage of a strategy that aims at reducing the energy consumption does not impact the benefits provided by the mobile edge caching

Recommendation Systems in Libraries: an Application with Heterogeneous Data Sources

The Reading[&]Machine project exploits the support of digitalization to increase the attractiveness of libraries and improve the users’ experience. The project implements an application that helps the users in their decision-making process, providing recommendation system (RecSys)-generated lists of books the users might be interested in, and showing them through an interactive Virtual Reality (VR)-based Graphical User Interface (GUI). In this paper, we focus on the design and testing of the recommendation system, employing data about all users’ loans over the past 9 years from the network of libraries located in Turin, Italy. In addition, we use data collected by the Anobii online social community of readers, who share their feedback and additional information about books they read. Armed with this heterogeneous data, we build and evaluate Content Based (CB) and Collaborative Filtering (CF) approaches. Our results show that the CF outperforms the CB approach, improving by up to 47% the relevant recommendations provided to a reader. However, the performance of the CB approach is heavily dependent on the number of books the reader has already read, and it can work even better than CF for users with a large history. Finally, our evaluations highlight that the performances of both approaches are significantly improved if the system integrates and leverages the information from the Anobii dataset, which allows us to include more user readings (for CF) and richer book metadata (for CB)

Toward a Blended Ontology: Applying Knowledge Systems to Compare Therapeutic and Toxicological Nanoscale Domains

Bionanomedicine and environmental research share need common terms and ontologies. This study applied knowledge systems, data mining, and bibliometrics used in nano-scale ADME research from 1991 to 2011. The prominence of nano-ADME in environmental research began to exceed the publication rate in medical research in 2006. That trend appears to continue as a result of the growing products in commerce using nanotechnology, that is, 5-fold growth in number of countries with nanomaterials research centers. Funding for this research virtually did not exist prior to 2002, whereas today both medical and environmental research is funded globally. Key nanoparticle research began with pharmacology and therapeutic drug-delivery and contrasting agents, but the advances have found utility in the environmental research community. As evidence ultrafine aerosols and aquatic colloids research increased 6-fold, indicating a new emphasis on environmental nanotoxicology. User-directed expert elicitation from the engineering and chemical/ADME domains can be combined with appropriate Boolean logic and queries to define the corpus of nanoparticle interest. The study combined pharmacological expertise and informatics to identify the corpus by building logical conclusions and observations. Publication records informatics can lead to an enhanced understanding the connectivity between fields, as well as overcoming the differences in ontology between the fields

Cross-layer reliability evaluation, moving from the hardware architecture to the system level: A CLERECO EU project overview

Advanced computing systems realized in forthcoming technologies hold the promise of a significant increase of computational capabilities. However, the same path that is leading technologies toward these remarkable achievements is also making electronic devices increasingly unreliable. Developing new methods to evaluate the reliability of these systems in an early design stage has the potential to save costs, produce optimized designs and have a positive impact on the product time-to-market. CLERECO European FP7 research project addresses early reliability evaluation with a cross-layer approach across different computing disciplines, across computing system layers and across computing market segments. The fundamental objective of the project is to investigate in depth a methodology to assess system reliability early in the design cycle of the future systems of the emerging computing continuum. This paper presents a general overview of the CLERECO project focusing on the main tools and models that are being developed that could be of interest for the research community and engineering practice

Early Component-Based System Reliability Analysis for Approximate Computing Systems

A key enabler of real applications on approximate computing systems is the availability of instruments to analyze system reliability, early in the design cycle. Accurately measuring the impact on system reliability of any change in the technology, circuits, microarchitecture and software is most of the time a multi-team multi-objective problem and reliability must be traded off against other crucial design attributes (or objectives) such as power, performance and cost. Unfortunately, tools and models for cross-layer reliability analysis are still at their early stages compared to other very mature design tools and this represents a major issue for mainstream applications. This paper presents preliminary information on a cross-layer framework built on top of a Bayesian model designed to perform component-based reliability analysis of complex systems

Multiplicity dependence of jet-like two-particle correlations in p-Pb collisions at sNN\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.02 TeV

Two-particle angular correlations between unidentified charged trigger and associated particles are measured by the ALICE detector in p-Pb collisions at a nucleon-nucleon centre-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The transverse-momentum range 0.7 $< p_{\rm{T}, assoc} < p_{\rm{T}, trig} <$ 5.0 GeV/$c$ is examined, to include correlations induced by jets originating from low momen\-tum-transfer scatterings (minijets). The correlations expressed as associated yield per trigger particle are obtained in the pseudorapidity range $|\eta|<0.9$. The near-side long-range pseudorapidity correlations observed in high-multiplicity p-Pb collisions are subtracted from both near-side short-range and away-side correlations in order to remove the non-jet-like components. The yields in the jet-like peaks are found to be invariant with event multiplicity with the exception of events with low multiplicity. This invariance is consistent with the particles being produced via the incoherent fragmentation of multiple parton--parton scatterings, while the yield related to the previously observed ridge structures is not jet-related. The number of uncorrelated sources of particle production is found to increase linearly with multiplicity, suggesting no saturation of the number of multi-parton interactions even in the highest multiplicity p-Pb collisions. Further, the number scales in the intermediate multiplicity region with the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions estimated with a Glauber Monte-Carlo simulation.Comment: 23 pages, 6 captioned figures, 1 table, authors from page 17, published version, figures at http://aliceinfo.cern.ch/ArtSubmission/node/161