The importance of engaging in physical activity in older adulthood for transitions between cognitive status categories and death: A coordinated analysis of 14 longitudinal studies

Background: Given increasing incidence of cognitive impairment and dementia, further understanding of modifiable factors contributing to increased healthspan is crucial. Extensive literature provides evidence that physical activity (PA) delays the onset of cognitive impairment; however, it is unclear whether engaging in PA in older adulthood is sufficient to influence progression through cognitive status categories. Method: Applying a coordinated analysis approach, this project independently analyzed 14 longitudinal studies (NTotal = 52 039; mean baseline age across studies = 69.9-81.73) from North America and Europe using multistate survival models to estimate the impact of engaging in PA on cognitive status transitions (nonimpaired, mildly impaired, severely impaired) and death. Multinomial regression models were fit to estimate life expectancy (LE) based on American PA recommendations. Meta-analyses provided the pooled effect sizes for the role of PA on each transition and estimated LEs. Results: Controlling for baseline age, sex, education, and chronic conditions, analyses revealed that more PA is significantly associated with decreased risk of transitioning from nonimpaired to mildly impaired cognitive functioning and death, as well as substantially longer LE. Results also provided evidence for a protective effect of PA after onset of cognitive impairment (eg, decreased risk of transitioning from mild-to-severe cognitive impairment; increased likelihood of transitioning backward from severe-to-mild cognitive impairment), though between-study heterogeneity suggests a less robust association. Conclusions: These results yield evidence for the importance of engaging in PA in older adulthood for cognitive health, and a rationale for motivating older adults to engage consistently in PA

A decentralized strategy for cooperative robot exploration

We present a decentralized cooperative exploration strategy for mobile robots. A roadmap of the explored area, with the associate safe region, is built in the form of a compact data structure, called Sensor-based Random Graph. This is incrementally expanded by the robots by using a randomized local planner which automatically realizes a trade-off between information gain and navigation cost. Connecting structures, called bridges, are incrementally added to the graph to create shortcuts and improve the connectivity of the roadmap. Decentralized cooperation and coordination mechanisms are used so as to guarantee exploration efficiency and avoid conflicts. Simulations are presented to show the performance of the proposed technique

Fault-tolerant formation control of a team of quadrotors with a suspended payload

This paper proposes a fault-tolerant architecture for formation control and cooperative trajectory tracking for a team of autonomous quadrotors carrying a suspended load. Formation control is provided by the combination of passivity-based techniques and backstepping, while a supervisory fault-tolerant control policy is responsible to reconfigure the network topology and the control objectives upon detection of faults among the vehicles

Decentralized cooperative exploration: Implementation and experiments

We present an implementation of the SRG method, a decentralized cooperative exploration strategy. In this method, a roadmap of the explored area with the associate safe region is stored in a compact data structure, called Sensor-based Random Graph (SRG). No task decomposition and/or allocation is performed. The roadmap is incrementally built through a simple decentralized mechanism: each robot moves towards its local frontier to access areas that, on the basis of the available information, appear to be unexplored by the rest of the team. A detailed description of the software architecture used to implement the strategy is given. Preliminary experiments with a team of Khepera III robots are presented to show the performance of the proposed technique

Roma dall'antichità al Medioevo. Archeologia e storia nel Museo Nazionale Romano Crypta Balbi

Il volume è costituito da una serie di saggi introduttivi su Roma tra la tarda antichità e l'alto medioevo (storia, topografia, merci, alimentazione, circolazione monetaria, epigrafia, pittura, scultura, ecc.), dal catalogo dei materiali esposti nel Museo, introdotto dalle relative sezioni e dalla presentazione degli scavi che hanno restituito le testimonianze più importanti per la città in questo periodo

Non destructive analysis of a red figure vase of uncertain attribution from Falerii Veteres.

A red figure calyx crater of uncertain attribution, found in the Celle necropolis of Falerii Veteres, and several other red figure vases coming from different Italic and Attic workshops were analysed in situ with X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy. The comparison of the concentrations of the minor elements present in the ceramic body, in particular Cr, Ni, Sr, seems to support the attribution of the vessel to an Athenian workshop

Su un dinos a figure nere da Falerii Veteres

A black figured dinos decorated with two animal friezes was discovered between 1886 and 1889 in FALERII VETERES, La Penna necropolis, tomb 147 (LXXX) (LXXI1 Cozza). The vase does not appear in the monumental work of JD. Beazley dedicated to the Attic black figured vases, published in 1956 (ABM), although it includes other black figured vases discovered in the same tomb. The attribution of the vase has created problems even for AB. Brownlee, the greatest expert on Attic black figured DINOI. the DINOS, according to the shape and the style of the figures, can be dated to the end of the second quarter of the 6'1' century B.C. and can be attributed to Attic production. In particular, it can be compared to a DINOS discovered in LAVINIUM. Moreover, this study has brought into evidence contacts with the «Corinthian» Beotic pottery, Chalcidian pottery, the Campana Dinoi, East Greek Pottery (especially Clazonienian) and the Campana HYDRIAE. Arcliaeometric analyses of the DINOS have evidenced a high presence of copper with a concentration (? 0,3 %) significantly greater than the other vases analysed (less then 300 ppin). Analysis of the chromium and nickel concentrations, the most important element to determine the clay origin, has not yielded decisive data, while analysis of the strontium and rubidium concentrations has shown for our DINOS values very close to those of the DINOS from LAVINIUM

Motion Planning for Car-Like Robots Using Lazy Probabilistic Roadmap Method

International audienceIn this paper we describe an approach to probabilistic roadmap method. Our algorithm builds initially a roadmap in the configuration space considering that all nodes and edges are collision-free, and searches the roadmap for the shortest path between start and goal nodes. If a collision with the obstacles occurs, the corresponding nodes and edges are removed from the roadmap or the planner updates the roadmap with new nodes and edges, and then searches for a shortest path. The procedure is repeated until a collision-free path is found. The goal of our approach is to minimize the number of collision checks and calls to the local method. Experimental results presented in this paper show that our approach is very efficient in practice